


Unsustainable

by thegraytigress



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Angst, Bruce Banner Feels, Clint Barton Feels, Drama, Epic Bromance, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, Mind Control, Past Child Abuse, Science Bros, Steve Rogers Feels, Team as Family, Tony Stark Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-09 07:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 200,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1973673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve is forced to participate in a dangerous experiment, the consequences prove devastating. Driven by guilt and doubt, Bruce puts everything on the line to save Steve from becoming the monster within before the Avengers are forced to take down their own captain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Unsustainable](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720154) by [HighPrincessDie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighPrincessDie/pseuds/HighPrincessDie)



> **DISCLAIMER:** _Iron Man 3, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The First Avenger,_ and _The Avengers_ are the properties of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** T (for language, violence, disturbing imagery)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** So we did Steve and Tony ("Invincible") and Steve and Clint ("The Right Call") and Steve and Clint and Tony ("The Last Level") and Steve and Thor ("Self from Self") and Steve and Natasha ("Red Rain"). This is Steve and Bruce (with Tony and Clint in strong support). It's nestled after _Iron Man 3_ and _Thor: The Dark World_ but before _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ (spoilers for the first two but no spoilers for the latter). Of course, tons of whump and angst to go around. No pairings aside from Tony/Pepper (and Science Bros. bromance :-D). Parts of this story are canon with MCU, parts are canon with the comics, and parts I'm making up as I go.
> 
> Also, my science is based on a mixture of how things might work, how things could work in comic-verse, and how the story needs them to work. So take it all with a grain of salt! Onward and enjoy!

Bruce Banner liked to stay out of the spotlight.

Therefore his friendship with Tony Stark was a little counterintuitive.

Tony was flashy and wealthy and extravagant and pretty much the polar opposite of Bruce in every way.  Where Bruce was quiet and calm and reserved, Tony was loud and easily riled and opinionated.  Where Bruce appreciated simplicity and anonymity, Tony craved complexity and notoriety.  Tony actively sought out trouble, and Bruce did his damnedest to avoid it.  Tony flourished with attention, and Bruce shriveled and floundered when people noticed him.  They went together about as well as oil and water (with Tony as the highly combustible part of that mixture prone to explosion and disaster).  If it wasn’t for their mutual love of science, they’d really have nothing in common.  Still, they’d inexplicably become friends.

Bruce still doubted his sanity sometimes.  He really did.

“I’m kinda worried this thing is gonna blow up in my face.”  Tony was fiddling with the boot of his newest Iron Man suit (Mark 50 or something of those lines – honestly Bruce had lost count).  And honestly Bruce had stopped listening a few minutes ago.  Tony was prone to rambling and babbling nonsensically while he worked.  That was another huge disparity in their personalities.  Bruce actually appreciated peace and quiet, and there wasn’t a whole lot of that around Stark Tower.  He wondered sometimes if it would kill Tony to sit still for a moment and _not talk_.  He wondered if he was even capable.

Stark sat on a stool, chewing on a piece of pepperoni pizza, staring at the innards of the boot.  He had grease on his shirt (pizza or otherwise – Bruce didn’t know).  His face was tight with concentration, but his eyes suggested he really wasn’t focused.  At least not on one thing.  Tony was brilliant, maybe the smartest man Bruce had ever known, and he was a phenomenal multitasker.  He could simultaneously do a dozen things, his agile mind running much faster and more efficiently than his body (hell, than most computers), and not drop the ball on any of them.  Well, a dozen things related to inventing and designing and building stuff.  He was pretty bad at most other things: running his company, keeping his act together, keeping his life in order.  Keeping Pepper happy (though that one was not for lack of trying, and since the Mandarin incident, things had definitely improved on that front).

But, then, Bruce was hardly one to judge.  He wasn’t exactly stellar at keeping his life together.  Although, again, things had improved on that front since the Battle of New York a year and a half ago.  A large part of his current stable state was due in no small part to Tony.  The man had opened his home and his labs and his life to Bruce without ever making a show about it (which for Tony was saying something).  They’d just fallen into each other, an easy relationship (the first Bruce had had in what felt like forever).  Tony took him at face value, and the issue of the “Other Guy” was never an issue between them.  Most of all, Tony wasn’t afraid of him.  That sort of implicit trust was a soothing balm for someone who never got close out of fear that the monster within would escape his control and hurt anyone dumb enough to be by his side.  They spent a lot of time together, inventing together, working together, tinkering together.  They’d had their moments apart (sometimes a lot of moments, weeks or months at a stretch), but when Tony was done with his latest life crisis or Bruce had completed his last guilt-ridden or fear-driven trip into self-exile in some remote part of the world, they always found each other again.  There was a standing invitation at Stark Tower, and though Bruce had been reticent at first about staying some place _so visible_ in the middle of some place _so populated_ , it didn’t bother him so much anymore.  Tony grounded him, and he needed it.

And Tony needed him, too.  It was heartening, damn nice when he admitted it to himself.  Extremis would have killed Pepper had it not been for Bruce’s help in neutralizing it.  And Extremis had finally “burned away” some of Tony’s demons and allowed him to at long last remove the shrapnel from his heart and the arc reactor from his chest.  Bruce had been instrumental in all of that, and he was secretly very proud that he had been.

“You’re drifting again,” Tony sing-songed from the other side of the desk.  “You’re a crappy listener.  You know that, right.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and went back to looking over his latest project on one of Stark’s many holographic computer terminals.  His last trip to India had inspired him to investigate the possibility self-sustaining plants given the region’s level of famine and poverty.  He’d seen too many people starving, too many children with no meat on their bones and swollen stomachs and dead eyes, to continue to turn a blind eye to it.  Nothing any nation could do seemed to be enough to feed hundreds of thousands of poor families in the world, so Bruce had taken it upon himself to do what he could.  Everything he had tried to this point, practicing medicine for those who couldn’t afford it, offering to charity to everyone he could, had been like slapping a band-aid on a mortal wound.  So he’d turned to science because that was what he did.  And tying science into something he wanted to do made him only want to do it all the more, so he’d spent the last couple of weeks at Stark Tower, working on his newest endeavor.

But, unfortunately, he was reaching an impasse.  His thought had been simple.  Extremis conferred extraordinary resilience, unbelievable strength, the capability to veritably regrow damaged tissue.  Its capabilities were not well studied, even, so there was theoretically no limit to what it could do.  However, the side-effects were something of an (actually a _huge_ ) issue.  Madness.  Rage.  Not to mention the heat and energy produced by the Extremis reaction with organic tissue that basically resulted in combustion of said tissue.  Bruce had developed a way to neutralize that aspect of the chemical, but with that went a lot of its positive qualities.  The preternatural strength.  The regenerative abilities.  Some of Extremis functioned even with the dampening qualities of the neutralizing agents, but not enough to create plants that bloomed and bore fruit indefinitely and were immune to age and disease.  And when he lessened the amount of neutralizing agents, his plants went up in a small, sad ball of flame and smoke.

He had been trying to look over the latest round of data.  His last tomato plant had survived a few days, sprouting some large and plump and promising fruit, before going the way of all the other plants.  He was getting a little discouraged, frankly, and more than a little frustrated.  The scientist in him knew that Extremis had a purpose, that maybe the rogue group Advanced Idea Mechanics (or AIM) had used it for evil but it could be fixed and redeemed.  He probably should have given up, but he couldn’t let it go.  He and Tony were too alike in that regard.  When they knew they were right, they’d do just about anything to prove it.  Pepper called it being incorrigible.  Tony called it being confident.  Bruce just thought it was being a good scientist.

“Earth to Brucey,” Tony called.  “Houston, do we have a problem?”

“What?  Oh.  What were you saying?”

“I was saying that I think any marriage proposal I make to her is gonna blow up in my face.  I said it about three times in fact.”  Tony pushed himself away from his work bench, his stool rolling across the floor as he reached for another piece of pizza from the box atop the adjacent bench.  Food didn’t really belong in a workroom, but Tony wasn’t exactly the type to care about the rules.  “She’s expecting it now, and she likes things to be unexpected.  Now how the hell am I supposed to deal with that kind of logic?”

“Oh.  I dunno.”

Tony rolled his eyes.  “You’re useless.  How many times a day do you tune me out?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“You need to get better at this whole listening thing.”

“What I need is a stabilizing agent,” Bruce answered, shaking his head and rubbing his chin at the latest sets of simulations on the screen before him.  “None of this stuff I’ve tried has come even remotely close to working.  It’s all too weak.”

Tony took a messy bite of his pizza, grumbling the whole time.  “I could buy her anything, take her anywhere, but somehow she’ll know what it’s about right away.  She’s smart like that.  So that leaves just _doing_ it in the middle of her brushing her teeth or something, but then she’ll complain that it wasn’t special enough.  I’m screwed either way.”  Bruce narrowed his eyes and watched as the computer projected out how long his tomato plant might survive if he varied his lasted concoction of stabilizing chemicals.  It was downright pathetic how insufficient everything he had was.  “I don’t even know why I’m asking you.  The longest relationship you’ve had in months was with that plant, and you killed it.”

Bruce sighed and dropped his head onto his folded forearms.  “Back to the drawing table.  Scratch another one off the list.”

“How long is the list?”

“Short and getting shorter.”

“It is possible, contrary to your hopes and dreams, that Extremis is just fundamentally a piece of shit.  If they had been able to make it work, I wouldn’t have had to fix it.”  At Bruce’s withering look, Tony conceded.  “ _We_ wouldn’t have had to fix it.  Not that Killian and his band of morons were all that smart.  Hell, I fixed part of the problem when I was fall-down drunk off my ass.”  Tony stuck a probe into the boot in front of him after stuffing the remains of his pizza into his mouth.  “Letting it go wouldn’t be so bad.  You’re starting to smell like scorched fertilizer.”

“Your advice is, as always, much appreciated,” Bruce dryly remarked.

“What I’m here for,” Tony said with a patented shit-eating grin.  “If your advice to me was half as awesome as my advice to you, I’d say this is an equal partnership.”

Bruce sighed.  Maybe Tony was right.  He’d been turning this problem over and over again in his head and losing sleep over it and agonizing over it for weeks.  He didn’t like things he couldn’t solve or even understand.  He didn’t like giving up, even if everybody thought he was mellow and malleable and unobtrusive.  He was used to things coming easy to him, being obvious and readily apparent.  Maybe it wasn’t worth the frustration.  It still surprised him sometimes that he was such a poor judge of what was deserving of his anger and what wasn’t.  But his baseline of “angry” had shifted so much in the last few years.  “Look, I highly doubt she really cares how it happens so long as it happens.  You’re over-thinking this.”

“Now that is the very definition of the pot calling the kettle black,” Tony remarked.

Bruce gave him another long-suffering glare.  “Pepper knows you love her, right?”

“Well, yeah.  I mean, I gave her a necklace made of shrapnel.  It was a gift that literally came from my heart.  If that doesn’t say ‘I love you’, I don’t know what does.”

Bruce rolled his eyes.  “If she knows you love her, it’ll be fine.  She’ll be happy no matter how you ask her.”

“Never pegged you for the romantic type,” Tony said.  He was deflecting, but Bruce could see his face relax just a little and a light of pride and relief come to his eyes.  “Did the Hulk shrivel inside you even a little bit when you said that?”

If it had been anyone else, that would have bothered him.  The mere mention of the “Other Guy” used to really set him on edge.  But with Tony, it was just one of those things.  Teasing and ribbing and testing were things that Tony just did.  He fiddled with dangerous stuff just to see what would happen, not because he was cruel or malicious or self-destructive (well, not entirely because he was self-destructive).  He pushed buttons to learn and stimulate and bring down walls and force things out in the open.  It was the sort of no-holds-barred, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to life that terrified him after his accident.  Now it was just another thing on another day.  “Just do us both a favor and propose already?  You have been whining about this for weeks.”

Tony had the decency to look somewhat affronted.  “ _Whining?_   I don’t–”

“Sir.”  JARVIS’ calm voice interrupted their conversation, echoing slightly in the spacious workshop around them.  “Captain Rogers and Agent Barton are here.”

Tony’s face immediately tightened in frustration and irritation, and he set his tools down to the work bench with a clank.  “No.  Oh, no.  Tell them no.  No way in hell.  I am done.  No more.  And I already explained to Fury that my consulting hours were–”

“They are already in the elevator and headed to you,” JARVIS declared.

“On whose authority?”  The doors to the elevator on the other end of the lab dinged and slid open.  Tony sighed and sagged on his stool in defeat.  “Betrayed by the only person I thought I could trust.”

Pepper Potts was laughing at something as she stepped out of the lift.  She looked positively radiant, dressed in an expensive black pantsuit and a white blouse.  Her auburn hair was pulled into a loose bun, wisps and tendrils of orange falling loose to frame her pretty face.  Her red lips were pulled into a sweet smile as she hung onto the arm of Steve Rogers.  The soldier’s affable grin slid away when he saw Tony.  “Don’t tell me you can’t find yourself a date, Steve,” Pepper said as they walked out into the lab.  Obviously they had been catching up on the ride up through the tower.  “I happen to know dozens of women who would fall over themselves for a chance to go out with you.”

“I doubt that, ma’am,” Steve stammered.

Pepper laughed again, refusing to let go of Rogers’ arm as they strolled across the large room to the work area.  “Sure they would!  Don’t be so modest.  You’re Captain America, for crying out loud.  That’s one in a million.  Strong.  Handsome.  Wholesome.”  Steve actually blushed and was looking increasingly uncomfortable.  “I’d be after you in a heartbeat if it weren’t for Tony.”

“What the hell?  Rogers, first you invite yourself over and now you flirt with my girl?” Tony accused, standing from his stool.

Rogers winced and shook his head.  Pepper smiled again.  She was a shrewd woman, smart and beautiful and capable, and she didn’t put up with anyone’s nonsense, least of all Stark’s.  She removed her arm from the crook of Steve’s elbow and walked over to Tony, her eyes gaining a mischievous twinkle.  She wiped the grease from his goatee with a napkin she grabbed from one of the benches (naturally miles away from Tony himself) and then slid her arms around his neck.  “No, no, babe.  I’m flirting with him.”

Next to Steve, Clint Barton groaned.

Pepper’s face gained a harder edge.  “And ‘my girl’?  That sounds pretty official, doesn’t it?  Something that official–”

Tony shook his head and pulled her away.  “No way.  You’re in charge of everything else in my life, Potts.  You’re not in charge of this.”

“Just a friendly reminder.”

“Consider me reminded.  You’re making this impossible, by the way.”

Pepper smiled.  “I have meetings.  Play nice with your friends.”  She gave Tony a quick peck on the cheek and then walked away, stopping beside Steve and Clint.  “Thanks, Captain.  Agent Barton.”

Steve had his hands clasped together in front of him.  He managed a grin and a nod.  “Ma’am.”  All four men watched her stride back to the elevator and step inside it.  Then the doors closed and she was gone.

“I think that is what we call lighting a fire under your ass,” Barton said.

Tony sighed and plopped back down on his stool tiredly.  He wasn’t embarrassed; he didn’t have the capacity to be embarrassed.  He wheeled himself back over to his work.  “Good to see you guys,” he said, but his tone suggested he wasn’t at all pleased with their sudden appearance.  Tony glanced out of the corner of his eye toward the two men.  Clint was dressed in black with a SHIELD jacket and a holstered gun on his hip.  Bruce wondered how many other weapons the master assassin had hidden.  Steve sported a new uniform that was dark blue and trimmed in silver with a gleaming gray star over his chest.  He carried his shield on his back.  “Nice threads.  Definitely an improvement over the spangly outfit.  To what do we owe this patriotic pleasure?”

Steve gave a humorless smile.  It had been a while (almost a year?) since Bruce had seen him last.  He looked strikingly different.  More confident.  More modern.  His hair was shorter, his stature maybe a bit taller, the set of his face and the light in his eyes surer of his place in this new world.  He looked every bit like Captain America, a living war legend and the leader of the Avengers.  It would be a lie to say they knew anything about each other; despite working together to repel the Chitauri invasion, they were hardly more than acquaintances.  The Steve Rogers he’d met before the Battle of New York had been sad, serious, and visibly suffering from being lost and presumed dead fighting HYDRA during World War II only to be found seventy years in the future.  This Steve Rogers was still serious, at least, but calm and collected and grounded.  Bruce had to admire that.  Hell, Bruce admired a lot about him, if he could be honest with himself.

But they had no common ground between them, nothing beyond a few frantic minutes they’d shared together to save the city.  And Steve intimidated him.  Steve made him uncomfortable.  Steve was the world’s one and only super soldier, transformed from a sick, weak kid into one of the fastest, strongest, and smartest men on the planet.  The serum that had performed this huge scientific feat back during World War II had been long lost, and no attempt to recreate it had been successful.  Most, Bruce’s own included, had ended disastrously.  And it wasn’t just that Steve was a reminder of how hellishly _wrong_ his work on the serum and Gamma radiation had gone.  Steve was the symbol of _why_ it hadn’t worked.  Steve was all parts valor and courage and kindness.  He was the exemplar hero, strong in the face of injustice, noble and self-sacrificing, compassionate and true.  He was everything that Bruce wasn’t.  One of the tenants of the super soldier serum was its ability to amplify everything within a man.  With Steve, it had taken a frail boy’s huge and powerful heart and turned him into a warrior for peace.  A shield between the innocent and those who tried to harm them.  With Bruce, it had taken his anger and arrogance and turned him into a monster.  Steve represented a stark and undeniable truth: it hadn’t been his science that had been so fatally flawed.  It had been _him_.

That was somewhat difficult to come to terms with.  Years later, he still hadn’t.

Steve’s face was very no-nonsense but not at all rattled, even by Tony’s sarcasm.  “We’re here on behalf of SHIELD.”

“Yeah.  Got that part, Captain Obvious.”

Bruce shook his head.  Maybe Tony wasn’t surprised, but he sure was.  Especially since the last time he’d seen Steve talk about trusting SHIELD he had been condemning them over the HYDRA weapons he’d found aboard the helicarrier.  “I wasn’t aware you were working for them.”

“Remember what I told you about needing to improve your listening skills?” Tony cocked an eyebrow.  “And I thought you weren’t marching to Fury’s fife, Rogers.”

Steve didn’t react to the bait.  He released a slow breath, his tall, muscular form deflating softly.  “He asked me for my help a little while ago.  I agreed so long as SHIELD stays true to what it’s meant to do.”

Tony grunted dismissively at that.  “I’d count all the ways that’s monumentally naïve, but we don’t have all day.  What national security goal brings you to me this time?”

“Believe it or not, we’re not here to talk to you.”  Barton stepped up beside Rogers, tossing a USB thumb drive toward Stark.  Tony caught it, a look of surprise shattering his previously nonchalant face.  Clint turned and appraised Bruce evenly.  He was even harder to read than Steve, a truly cool customer.  Steve might have visibly changed, but Barton looked exactly the same as he had before.  Confident.  Guarded.  As little as Bruce knew about Rogers, he knew even less about Hawkeye other than he’d spent the vast majority of the Chitauri mess under the control of a deranged demigod and thus playing for the bad guys.  The man exuded deadliness with each and every stern look, including the one now stoically analyzing him.  “We’re here to talk to Doctor Banner.”

The room was silent for a long minute.  Bruce couldn’t get his head around that at first.  And when he did, something inside him, that little voice of warning that he’d learned to trust over the years, started chanting in his head that this was bad.  “Me?  What do you want with me?”

“Right now, just your help,” Clint answered.

“Great.  The last time Fury wanted my help most of midtown Manhattan was destroyed.  You guys probably remember that.”

“Nothing on that scale,” Clint assured. 

Tony jacked the USB drive into one of JARVIS’ computer terminals, and a slew of data appeared.  He reached into the holographic display and grabbed footage of a man giving a symposium at New York University on genetic engineering.  Bruce recognized the face immediately, even before Tony brought up the SHIELD profile on him.  “That’s Dan Lahey.  He and I were post-docs together at Culver…”  A sinking sensation settled in the pit of his stomach.  “What is it that you think he’s done?  Because whatever it is, he didn’t do it.”

“What makes you say that?” Steve asked, folding his impressive arms across his chest.  It wasn’t a manipulative question.  He simply wanted Bruce’s take.

But Bruce couldn’t help but be defensive.  “The guy’s a mouse.  Brilliant biochemist but pretty much a pushover.  He had a chance to work on a grant for the CDC developing vaccines for some pretty serious stuff, anthrax and H1N1 and the like, but he refused because it would involve experimenting on animals.  And not because he’s a card-carrying PETA member or anything like that.  He just didn’t think he’d have it in himself to hurt a fly.”  Clint and Steve shared a quick look that Bruce couldn’t read.  He didn’t appreciate the secrecy.  He felt himself getting riled, so he drew a deep breath.  “What’s this about?”

“You’re meeting with Lahey tomorrow, right?” Clint asked.

Bruce didn’t like where this was going.  “Yes?  I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”  When neither of the SHIELD agents said anything further, he got more irritated.  “He invited me to his lab to consult on one of his projects.  Tony was going to come with me.”

“Yeah, I was going to go with him,” Tony said.

“We know,” Clint said.  “We’d like for you to allow us to come as well.”

“You know?  How the hell could you know that?” Bruce asked.  His patience was wearing thin, and he was feeling increasingly exposed.  He never liked that feeling.  “I suppose it’s pretty damn naïve to think only the NSA is spying on my email.  It’s open season on American freedoms.”

Clint shook his head.  “SHIELD wasn’t spying on you,” he corrected.  “A few weeks ago, Lahey received a rather large grant from NIH for some project supposedly based on studying the biochemical underpinnings of human emotion.  That’s what he called you to advise him on.”  Bruce nodded.  Dan was a downright genius when it came to biochemical and genetic engineering.  He’d excelled in his postdoctoral studies, quickly becoming a world-renowned expert on human cellular processes.  But he’d never made much of himself after it became obvious that he had some rather… _unorthodox_ ideas, namely that human emotions could influence biochemical reactions.  That human emotions could fundamentally alter chemical processes.  Emotion was a rather subjective construct, one that was not easily or definitively or even _quantitatively_ measurable, so what he was proposing, while intriguing, was pretty much cast aside as nonsense.  Or at least not feasible.  It didn’t help that the man had about as much social grace as a shy five-year old.  At the time, Bruce had humored his friend’s interest in the human psyche as a powerful influence of biology mostly because he’d become something of a social and scientific pariah and Bruce had felt bad for him.  But even then he’d thought Dan’s ideas were pretty far-fetched.

Since becoming the Hulk and having his own rage turn his body from human to monster, his opinions had changed somewhat.

“Look, ever since the mess with Aldrich Killian, SHIELD’s been keeping closer tabs on the scientific community.  Fury will never admit it, but the whole AIM incident caught him a bit by surprise.  He’s had people keeping an eye on the loner types in the world of biochemical, genetic, and weapons research, trying to catch the next nut job before he invents the next WMD or worse,” Clint explained.  “We’ve been monitoring Lahey’s email.  He showed up on the radar after getting this grant.  It’s big and it’s not legitimate.  Nobody at NIH remembers ever receiving a proposal from him for this type of research.”

“Well, there are politics at NIH, you know,” Bruce countered.  “Science may be a pure endeavor for the betterment of humanity, but scientists are human, and humans need to eat and have roofs over their heads and tend to get swallowed up by their own agendas.  Dan lost tenure at Culver a couple years back.  Research takes money.  After a while you don’t worry so much where it comes from so long as it keeps coming.”

Tony was still picking through the data.  His brow furrowed in puzzlement.  “I can see what tipped off Fury,” he commented.  A few waves of his hands brought up a visual representation of a chain of money and the people involved in transferring it that was quite a few layers deep, from Lahey through program directors at NIH through a senator or two to a trust that funded a think tank and finally to one Maya Hansen.  “Damn, I guess she got around.”  Tony’s voice was pinched in just a bit of hurt and betrayal.  “AIM had its grubby fingers pulling a lot of strings.”

Bruce looked at the graphical representation of a conspiracy.  He didn’t like it, but it sure seemed like Dan was possibly involved with the fringe scientific community.  The sort that made serums to regenerate the human body from crippling or devastating injuries but really just resulted in rage, chaos, and destruction.  The sort that kept trying to recreate the super soldier serum no matter how many times it failed and how many innocent lives were lost in the process.  He wanted to deny it because this didn’t feel right.  And he didn’t want to consider why Dan really wanted to see him if he was involved with AIM.  “Just because he was getting money from AIM doesn’t mean he was working for them.  The sort of research Dan was interested in doesn’t tend to get funded from respectable organizations.”

“Too dangerous?” Steve asked.

“No,” Bruce said.  “Just too _out there_.  I’m sure he didn’t know where the money was coming from.  For crying out loud, he works at the Hopkins Research Institute.  They’re–”

“Not dangerous,” Tony supplied.  “Not even sexy.  That place is where ideas go to die.”

“The most exciting scientific breakthrough coming out of there in the last five years involves fruit flies.”

Steve sighed slowly.  “Doctor Banner–”

“Bruce,” Bruce corrected tiredly.

Steve winced.  “Bruce.  You’re right.  It’s probably nothing.  And you’re right about Doctor Lahey; he hardly seems the type to be caught up in something like this.”

Clint added, “The guy doesn’t even have a parking ticket on his record.”

“And Fury shouldn’t have been spying on him without warrant or at least without cause and exigent circumstances.  But he was, and now that this has come to our attention, we can’t just turn a blind eye,” Steve said.  “Maybe he’s legitimate but AIM is trying to target him, trying to turn him into another scientist serving their ambitions like Hansen was.  Like you said, the promise of money and fame and notoriety, especially when you’ve been ridiculed for most of your career, is alluring.”

“It wasn’t to Dan.  He couldn’t have cared less what people thought.  He cared about the science.”

Steve glanced at Clint.  “That may well be the case.  If it is, let’s keep it that way.  Let us escort you to the meeting tomorrow.”

Bruce felt a little off-put by this whole conversation, first that SHIELD thought his friend was capable of being influenced by evil (or doing evil himself) despite his assurances to the contrary, and second that SHIELD didn’t trust him to handle it.  “Dan knows who I am,” he said, shaking his head.  “And he already knows Tony is coming.  You really think he’s going to try anything with Iron Man and…”  He still couldn’t get used to saying it; it was a damn pathetic defense mechanism, like if he didn’t quite admit to it, it would go away.  “… the Hulk standing right there?”

“He’ll be even less inclined with Captain America and Hawkeye there as well,” Steve said.  “And, no, I don’t anticipate anything happening.  I don’t anticipate that having the Avengers there is at all necessary.  Director Fury asked us to go with you to make SHIELD’s presence known, both to Doctor Lahey and to anyone seeking to manipulate or coerce him.  That’s it.”

“That’s it?” Tony repeated doubtfully.  “He just wants you to stand there and look threatening?”

Clint and Steve shared another look.  Barton crossed his arms over his chest and shifted his weight slightly.  “Pretty much.”

“You have my word,” Steve said.

Bruce grimaced before slumping slightly in defeat.  “You’re not going to take ‘no’ for an answer, are you.”

But Steve surprised him.  “Yes, I will.  I don’t march to Fury’s fife.”  He darted an annoyed glance at Stark.  “However, I’d appreciate it if you let us do what we were sent to do.  If AIM or whatever is left of it is targeting your friend, he’s in danger.”

Bruce looked between Steve and Clint.  Were it anyone else, he’d worry that that comment was meant to appeal to his worry, to stoke to life old feelings of friendship in order to manipulate him into agreeing.  But he knew Steve Rogers wouldn’t resort to lying or tricking him.  He was too good for that.  If he was promising something, he meant it with every ounce of loyalty and sincerity.  Bruce looked over at Tony.  The inventor cleared his workspace of the data on Dan from SHIELD and shrugged neutrally.  “Your meeting.”

Stark was positively useless sometimes.  Bruce turned his eyes back to the two SHIELD agents before him.  He had to admit that the evidence that something was not entirely right with Dan’s work and funding was pretty compelling.  If SHIELD’s presence could ward off interested parties, maybe it would be worth it.  It had been for him.  SHIELD had kept the US military and who knew how many other groups (both good and bad) off his tail for years.  Maybe he’d be doing Dan a favor.

“Okay,” he said.  He watched Steve and Clint share yet another look – what was this?  Some sort of SHIELD silent communication?  “Just keep your distance, okay?  Dan’s not… well, he spooks easily.  And he asked me to help, so I don’t want him to think…”

“Got it.  Won’t be a problem,” Steve promised.  He smiled genuinely for the first time during the conversation.  “Tomorrow at four o’clock, right?”

“Yeah.  You guys can’t invite yourselves to dinner afterward, though,” Tony said.  “That’s plain rude.  Now skedaddle.  We’re doing science.”

Steve nodded.  If he was relieved or worried or happy or proud of himself or _whatever_ , it wasn’t obvious.  Neither was Clint’s reaction.  The two of them were like statues.  “Thanks, Doctor Banner.  Mr. Stark.”  They turned and left.

When the elevator doors were safely closed, Tony groaned.  “Some things never change,” he grumbled.  “That guy _still_ acts like he has an American flag, pole and all, stuck up his ass.”

“I thought the two of you buried the hatchet after we saved the city.”

Tony grabbed a probe and stuck it back into Iron Man’s boot.  “We did.  Doesn’t mean that I have to like him, though.  What did Pepper say?”  He did the worst impression of Pepper’s voice imaginable.  “So _strong_ and _handsome_ and _wholesome_.”  He fake coughed and covered his mouth dramatically.  “Blargh.  Think I puked in my mouth a little there.”

“He seemed a good sport about it.”

“’Course he did.  The guy’s a goddamn rock with a personality to match.”  That gave Bruce pause.  He looked back at his laptop, idle and waiting for his commands.  He stared at the simulations for his project, his _failed_ simulations because he couldn’t find a powerful enough stabilizing agent.  And then it occurred to him.  But the idea was so crazy that he couldn’t really digest it for a long moment, his eyes blank and his mind going a million miles a minute.  “Oh, I know that look,” Tony said.  “That’s the ‘Eureka!’ look.  What is it?”

“A stabilizing agent,” Bruce murmured.  The corner of his mouth turned in a little smile.  “The Holy Grail of stabilizing agents.  The best one there is.”

“Rogers?”  Bruce nodded.  Tony rolled his eyes.  “You’re dreaming now.  Been there, done that. You know better than anyone that actually finding the Holy Grail would be easier than recreating the super soldier serum.  Not to mention I’m pretty sure SHIELD would be on your ass faster than the Green Peace yuppies of the world would be on your super plants.”

“Maybe I don’t need to recreate it. Maybe I just need some of it.  Steve’s body makes its own supply.  If I could just get a blood sample, just enough to try and confirm some of my hypotheses–”

Tony chuckled.  “Good luck with that, Banner.”  At Bruce’s downtrodden expression, he turned from his work again.  His expression was a tad exasperated.  “You know, I have this crazy idea.  You could, I dunno, _ask_ him.  He’s Captain America.  Saving children and curing world hunger falls under the job description.”

Bruce grimaced.  His brain had been running of its own accord, charging through the known chemical properties of the super soldier serum and relating them to the known problems with Extremis.  These two chemicals were veritably polar opposites.  Equilibrium versus radical amounts of uncontrolled energy.  Self-sustaining versus fast-burning.  Both conferred enhanced metabolism, constitution, power, and regeneration, but they did so in completely different ways.  Could they really complement each other?  Could the addition of the serum stop Extremis from destroying his plants before they could really bloom?

It didn’t matter.  It was a moot point.  “No,” he said, shaking his head.  “I couldn’t do that.  It’s just…  It’s not right.”

“What?  Asking him or fooling around with the very same thing that gave birth to tall, green, and deadly?”

Bruce winced sheepishly.  Tony knew him too well.  “Asking him.”

“Well, then, I guess if God intended the world to have an endless supply of tomatoes, he would have made tomato plants a little more durable.”  An uncomfortable moment of silence crept by.  Truth be told, this wasn’t the first time an idea like this had occurred to him.  Ever since learning that Steve had been found in the ice, he’d been wondering about it.  The scientist in him hungered for answers, for a chance to poke and prod and analyze Steve to figure out why Project: Rebirth had succeeded and his own experiments had so horrifically failed.  Sometimes he’d downright obsessed over it when the pain and anger had been too great to ignore.  Sometimes he hungered for a cure so acutely that it was _all_ he could think about.  How he would do it.  How he could extract the serum from Steve’s blood and refine it and maybe, just maybe, reproduce it.  But he’d never been able to bring himself to pursue answers to his questions.  Part of it he knew was because he was too ashamed to have to ask Steve for anything, let alone something so private as unfettered access to his DNA and his cellular biology and his body.  But when it really came down to it, it was a selfish reason.  He was terrified of what he would find.

And everybody else seemed to have let it go.  Since saving Captain America, nobody had asked Bruce for his opinion on restarting Doctor Erskine’s work.  Nobody had posited that investigating the situation would be beneficial.  Nobody _good_ , anyway.  Not SHIELD or the United States government or the Avengers or Steve himself.  He was the only one who couldn’t entirely let it be.

Tony’s voice cut through his uncomfortable thoughts.  “You know, just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have worked.”  Bruce glared at Tony; did he actually think that thought had never occurred to him before?  “Maybe you used too much Gamma radiation.  Maybe you miscalculated something.  Rogers had my dad and a whole arsenal of scientists behind him.  Hell, if you had had me with you–”

“I know, Tony.”

“Just sayin’.”

“I know.”

Tony pursed his lips and appraised Bruce like he was some sort of flaw in one of his suits.  Then he set his tools down.  “Cheer up, Banner.  I’m sure you have tons more combinations of uselessness and futility to keep you busy until you grow a pair of balls big enough to ask.”

Bruce shook his head.  “I’ll grow a pair when you do.”

Tony smiled.  Bruce felt better seeing it for some reason.  For the same reason he always did.  “Harsh.”

Well, even if the super soldier serum would work, he would need a lot more of it than just a few drops of blood.  It really wasn’t practical.  So he put it out of his mind and went back to his projections and Tony went back to his tinkering. 


	2. Chapter 2

The Hopkins Research Institute was located just off of Route 17 near Paramus, New Jersey.  It was about a forty minute drive from Manhattan when traffic was decent, but they would be arriving in twenty-nine minutes if JARVIS’ calculations were correct.  It helped that Tony liked to drive fast (his Acura NSX could top 150 mph when he really pressed it, but speeding tickets were a pain in the ass, so he was sticking to a jaunty 70 in a 55).  It also helped that he kept speeding up, trying to lose his tail.  He was being just a tad bit childish, watching in irritation in the rearview mirror as Clint matched him and every weaving move he made in and out of traffic in the black SHIELD SUV behind him.  It wasn’t like he could really lose Barton; the guy had probably been trained in high speed pursuit, and this was nothing compared to that.  But the sight of that black SUV following him was aggravating and setting him on edge.  He didn’t like being followed.  He didn’t like SHIELD.  He didn’t like SHIELD butting into his business (well, Bruce’s business, but Bruce’s business was becoming his business).  He didn’t like SHIELD manipulating people or lying to people or sticking its greedy, ambitious fingers where they didn’t belong.  He didn’t mind Hawkeye too much; he hardly knew the guy beyond a few cracks he’d made about archery and elves back during the Battle of New York.  He had a feeling that Clint could be a snarky, sneaky bastard if it suited him, and Tony respected that.  But he didn’t like Captain America.

He didn’t like the fact that he and Rogers had fought on the helicarrier about Tony being worth nothing without Iron Man and Steve being special only because of the serum.  He didn’t like that he _still_ felt just a tad bit guilty about what he had said in a moment of scepter and stress-induced anger, and he didn’t like that Captain Perfect had apologized first when it was all over.  And it hadn’t been a half-assed apology.  It had been a genuine, sincere, “look, I was wrong and you really are a hero” kind of apology.  That really grinded his gears.  There was a heap of unresolved crap between them, not the least of which being that Steve had known Tony’s father back in the day and held him in way higher esteem than Howard Stark deserved.  And there was the little matter that Howard had been so intent on finding Captain America in the ocean along the Greenland ice shelf and then forming SHIELD to carry on SSR’s legacy that he’d hardly had time for (or interest in) Tony.  They both knew this sore spot was between them, but they were both content to let it fester because ignoring it was a hell of a lot easier than dealing with it.  And their personalities (well, his – Steve didn’t really have a personality) clashed so much that it was hard to see past their differences.  Steve was pretty much the embodiment of everything Tony despised.  Too noble and too naïve and too pure.  Too no-nonsense and serious and quiet.  Too flat and unchanging.  A tool, pure and simple.  Someone who followed orders without fail.  Steve was the first and best hero, the one to which everyone else was measured, and he’d set impossibly high standards even before he’d sacrificed himself for the sake of humanity.

Of course, Steve hadn’t really set those standards.  And a lot of this was Tony’s own insecurities if he could be honest with himself because no one had _ever_ asked him to be anything other than he was.  He was Iron Man and proud of it.  And he was damn good at what he did, at building and designing and inventing.  Oh, and saving the world (he’d done that a few times now).  He’d recently gotten himself through a very dark period in his life that had been filled with doubts and fears and panic and nightmares.  He’d come through it stronger, no longer burdened by his past.  He’d finally gotten the shrapnel out of his chest.  He knew now more than ever that he was powerful, and he didn’t need Iron Man to be a hero.  He knew _he_ was the hero.

But nobody could really compare to Captain America, and that was a little annoying.  Not a lot, but enough to bother him.  And it more than a little annoying that Steve Rogers was the least arrogant man he’d ever met.  He wore his humble beginnings and pure intentions on his proverbial sleeve.  Tony hadn’t seen Steve in a few months, not since his home in Malibu had been destroyed and he’d nearly lost Pepper and SHIELD had shown up fashionably late to an act of domestic terrorism so huge and extreme that he wondered how the hell they could have failed to see it coming and still have the balls to call themselves spies.  Steve had been there at the hospital trying hard not to seem concerned about him, but Tony had seen the worry in his eyes and the regret that he hadn’t been there to help.  He’d freaking _apologized_ for being on assignment out of the country.  He was distant and maybe a little cold, but he’d _meant_ it, and that was just too damn much.  Nobody should be so _good_.

Tony glanced in the rearview mirror again.  Steve and Clint were talking amiably.  They were both _smiling_ , like really smiling.  Smiling like friends.  That bothered him just a little bit, too.  He’d never really thought that the rest of the Avengers might go on without him when they’d parted ways last year.  That some of them might even become friends without him.  Tony liked to know everything and to be involved with everything.  “They have some super spy bromance going on or something,” he remarked.  Steve laughed at something Clint said.  He’d never seen Steve laugh before.  “Bonding over science is way cooler than bonding over… whatever it is they have in common.  Besides being Fury’s lap dogs.”  Did he sound jealous?  _Bullshit.  I’m not jealous._

Bruce didn’t say anything.  He had been distracted since the day before.  Tony didn’t like it when Bruce got distracted.  It inevitably led to brooding and withdrawn pessimism.  Not that Tony could blame him.  They all had their demons (hell, the whole fiasco with the Mandarin had taught him plenty about that, too).  But Bruce’s weren’t the sort that could be easily overcome, if they could even be beaten at all.  Granted, since turning the Hulk into an instrument for defense rather than destruction, since becoming an Avenger, Bruce’s outlook had improved drastically.  He’d been shown undeniably that there was the capacity for good in the monster.  Also, he wasn’t so nervous or guarded or angry about his condition.  He was calm and a lot more accepting.  He talked more about himself, and he talked about the future with hope in his eyes and voice.  Tony had expected Bruce Banner to be a man driven to find a cure, but he wasn’t.  At least not anymore.  Tony liked to think he had had a large part in that.  He really enjoyed having Bruce around, in fact.  Bruce didn’t put up with crap, but he wasn’t judgmental about it.  And he was a great sounding board.

Tony wasn’t sure exactly what was bothering Bruce.  This situation with his old colleague.  His failed experiments.  The usual misery that went hand-in-hand with being a real life Jekyll and Hyde.  Whatever it was, Bruce had had the personality of a wet sponge for the last day and he was getting tired of it.  “So your old buddy from Culver…”

“Dan.”  Traffic slowed in front of them as they pulled off Route 17.

“Right.  Not that I don’t believe you, because I do, but is there a chance he’s gone over to the Dark Side?”

Bruce looked at him, though not in anger.  A grimace broke his face.  As much as they didn’t like SHIELD, it was difficult to dismiss them.  SHIELD had an intelligence network that was huge and powerful and well-funded.  And maybe their methods were suspect, but Tony had to admit that SHIELD’s intentions were good.  They’d have to be to get Captain America to work for them.  So that meant that, as much as Bruce maybe wanted to deny his friend was involved in something illegal, there was a distinct possibility it was true.  “I haven’t talked with him in five years,” Bruce admitted.  “Does seem kinda strange that he’d contact me out of the blue.”

Tony stepped on the clutch and put the sports car into gear.  Now they were driving through a nice suburban area, complete with street trees adorned in lush summer foliage and pretty flower beds and quaint houses.  Hardly seemed like the area one would find a super villain.  “Yeah,” he agreed.  “Could just be a coincidence, though.  Maybe he saw the Hulk’s handiwork back during the fight with Loki and wanted to get together to reminisce about your academic days.”

“A year after the fact?”  Tony shrugged, but even he had to concede it sounded stupid.  Bruce sighed.  “I didn’t want to tell you this before, but I think he wants to see me because he’s working with Gamma radiation.”  Well, that explained some things.  Tony didn’t like where those things were going.  Gamma radiation had been responsible for and involved with quite a few disasters, the Hulk being one of them and the Tesseract another.  It was dangerous and deadly stuff.  Only Doctor Erskine back in 1943 had managed to harness its power into a successful experiment.  Even today, no one was sure how he had done it.  Bruce sighed again.  “Look, he was always interested in the interaction between human emotion and biology.  He had this crazy theory that thoughts and feelings could fundamentally alter chemical processes, and he thought that maybe this could account for some of the stranger things in life.  Telepathy and telekinesis and–”

“People turning into giant green rage monsters when they get angry?”

Bruce winced again.  “Yes.  And I’m worried that’s why he wants to see me.  He wants my input.  He didn’t say in his email, but the last time I saw him, he was talking about using Gamma rays to stimulate cellular growth and mutation during certain emotional states.  It sounds insane, I know.  But we’ve seen weirder.”

Gods and spaceships descending from distant planets?  Men frozen alive for seventy years and surviving like it was nothing?  Nigh unstoppable fire zombies and hordes of alien invaders and giant, floating Leviathans laying waste to Manhattan?  “I guess anything’s possible.”

“I just…”  Bruce looked uncomfortable and embarrassed but not so much as to ignore his own flaws.  “I need you there to keep me in check.  You know how it is when you get involved in something.  The problem ropes you in until you’re in way deeper than you thought you were and you want to stop but you can’t until you solve it.”  Tony did indeed know how that was.  He had some of his best ideas when he was in way too deep.  When responsibility and common sense fell to the wayside in pursuit of an answer.  Problem-solving was what he did.  He thrived in complexities, in the quest for truth, in the thrill of figuring something out.  It was more stimulating, more rewarding, and more addictive than any drug or money or sex or _anything_.  The drive to understand was what made him so awesome an inventor.  And it was what made Bruce so brilliant a scientist.  Bruce offered him the hint of an ashamed, knowing smile.  “You’re not the only one who screws around with things until they blow up in your face.  I can’t take those chances anymore, good or bad.”

Tony wasn’t sure he wanted this burden.  He’d take it up, of course, but it was a huge one and it was more than a little unnerving.  “Sure.”

“And if he’s messing around with Gamma rays, we need to make him stop before he hurts himself or someone else.  Or before someone else gets to him.”  Bruce shook his head and met Tony’s gaze firmly.  “People listen to you.”

Tony was a tad flattered at that, even though he knew it was true.  He tended to be a rather polarizing person.  There weren’t too many people who were ambivalent about him.  But he was wealthy and influential and intimidating and a genius; that carried a lot of clout, especially with those who were meek and maybe a tad submissive and misguided, and this Lahey guy sounded that way.

They turned off to a smaller road.  It was becoming slightly more wooded, the residential and business areas falling away.  A few minutes later they pulled up to a gate surrounding a large, white, nondescript building.  The Hopkins Research Institute looked about as exciting on the outside as the discoveries coming out of it were.  Tony rolled down the window of his car.  Inside there was one security guard who was busy playing with his phone.  “Name.”

“Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.  Here to see Daniel Lahey.”

The young man looked over from his phone slowly, his eyes widening.  Tony inwardly groaned; he didn’t really want to deal with a fan right then.  Adulation and adoration were great and all, but even he was getting tired of the media attention he always got.  “Oh my God!  You’re Iron Man!  And he’s the Incredible Hulk!  Oh my God!”

“And behind us, in case you’re wondering, is Captain America and Hawkeye.”  Might as well let the cat of the bag now.  It would be hard not to notice anyway, with Steve’s ridiculously obvious uniform and shield and Clint looking like someone straight out of a _Mission: Impossible_ movie.

“Oh, wow!  Wow!  This is…  Oh my God!   Do you mind if a get a picture?”

Bruce winced.  “Uh, yes.  Please don’t.  It’s fine.  We don’t need–”

But it was too late.  The kid was already snapping frantic images with his phone’s camera.  Bruce shrunk down in his seat a little.  Tony smiled wanly.  “Just easy on the Instagram, okay?  My cyber-stalkers are starting to freak me out.”

The guy blushed.  “Oh, right.  Totally.  I know, Mr. Stark.  I promise I won’t post it anywhere.”

“Well, not mine.  Feel free to post pictures of Captain America wherever you want.  He’s cool with it.”  Steve probably had no idea what Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of that was (well, Tony liked to think he didn’t because the idea of Captain America having a Twitter account was pretty disturbing).

The security guard continued to stare, awe-struck and slack-jawed, shocked into stupefied catatonia.  “Really?  That’s, uh… really?  Captain America’s back there?” 

Tony smiled again.  “In all of his glory.  Now could you let us through?  You know, if it’s not too much trouble.  Things to do and all.”

“Oh.  Oh, right!  Yeah, of course.  Have a good evening, Mr. Stark!”

The gate slowly opened and Tony pulled through, but not before looking behind him to make sure their fan was properly accosting the SHIELD SUV.  He smiled smugly, pleased with himself, as he followed signs to a parking garage attached to the building.  Bruce shook his head in disapproval, but his brown eyes were alight with amusement all the same.  “You’re an ass.”

“What?  They wanted to be visible, so now they are.”

“I don’t think that’s what they had in mind.”  They pulled into the parking garage, which was mostly empty considering people were leaving for the day.  Honestly, Tony wasn’t too thrilled with parking his expensive race car in a place like this where door dings or worse were probably a common occurrence (and for God’s sake – he was Tony Stark.  He never parked anywhere without valet).  But it was what it was.  They found a spot reserved for visitors and pulled into it.  A moment later, the SHIELD SUV parked beside them.

The sound of car doors opening and closing echoed loudly in the garage.  Clint and Steve were in the middle of a conversation as they joined Bruce and Tony in walking toward the bridge toward the main building.  “What the hell is a twitter?” Steve asked, his jaw set and his eyes narrowed.  He didn’t look happy, like he’d been manhandled into doing something he didn’t want but was too damn polite to refuse.  Tony couldn’t help but feel immensely pleased with himself; nothing was more gratifying than seeing the great Captain America all hot and bothered.  “And I suppose you’re the one who told that guy that it was okay to take my picture.”

“Gotta put on a little show for the fans every once in a while,” Tony answered.  He took off his sunglasses and stuck them in the pocket of his blazer.  “You oughta know something about that.  You used to sing and prance around all the time before you found your manhood.”

Steve actually blushed again.  This was twice in 24 hours.  Tony thought embarrassment was a good color on him.  “Hilarious,” he muttered.

“You know, I’m always looking for dancers for the Stark Expo.  Every year I go for the female variety, but I think people are getting tired of the same old, same old.  I’m an equal-opportunity employer and if Pepper’s to be believed, which she usually is, women are fawning all over themselves to have their way with you.  Right, Cap?  So _strong_ and _handsome_ and _wholesome_.”

Steve flushed, this time with anger, and his gloved hands clenched into fists at his side.  This was why Tony didn’t work well with others.  He had an incredibly irritating propensity to piss everyone off, and usually he was pretty damn proud of it.  Barton was fast, diffusing the situation with a sharp glance at Tony and then at Steve.  “Knock it off.”

“Remember what Pepper said about playing nice?” Bruce reminded him quietly.

“I _am_ playing nice,” Tony insisted.  He rolled his eyes at Steve’s hurt and irate expression.  “It was a joke, Rogers.  Geez.  Lighten up.  And by the way, you two look like the Gestapo.”  While he and Bruce were dressed casually, the two SHIELD agents were all business, Steve in his uniform with his shield on his back and Clint exactly the same as he had been the day before.  Tony was starting to wonder if they ever changed.  It also didn’t escape his notice that Clint was armed.  Somebody less perceptive might not have seen the holster under his jacket and the handgun secured in it.  He really wished that Bruce would have just turned Rogers down.  Iron Man was tucked into the trunk of his car, and he could summon the suit to him through freaking concrete if necessary in a matter of seconds.  They didn’t need protection or SHIELD posturing or whatever.  Having them here was a huge imposition.

Maybe Bruce was right and this Dan Lahey guy had flooded the area with ESP-inducing radiation because Clint seemed to share the exact same sentiments at the exact same time.  “This is a huge imposition, having you here.  This is a courtesy to Doctor Banner, Stark.  So keep your bullshit to yourself.  We’re getting in there, looking around, making sure Lahey is legit and otherwise uncompromised, and then we’re done.  End of story.”  He looked disarmingly at Bruce.  “No offense, doc.”

Bruce didn’t seem inclined to come to Tony’s defense, raising his hand and nodding dismissively, which probably meant he should dial back his asshole tendencies.  They reached the glass doors of the entrance.  Steve pulled one open and held it for them as they stepped through.  The soldier seemed to have reclaimed his composure, offering Tony a curt nod.  _Play nice,_ Tony thought angrily.  He could reel in his irritation and dislike of SHIELD for one night.  Couldn’t he?

There was a nondescript circular desk in front of them.  They were coming in through a side entrance into a fairly large and nicely decorated lobby.  The bland exterior of the building hadn’t suggested anything this elegantly furnished.  Tony was frankly surprised.  He’d read about this place off and on over the years, and it had always seemed like a haven for nerds and dweebs, the sort who showered once in a blue moon and lived in their parents’ basements until they were forty and had never kissed a girl who wasn’t related to them and couldn’t function normally in an environment not filled with other nerds and dweebs.  This was shockingly professional-looking, with sleek metal stairs and expensive looking tile and carpet and a real waiting area adorned with furniture not made of plastic.  They even had artwork.

Bruce stepped up to the desk.  He was trying not to look rattled, but Bruce _always_ looked rattled, especially in new and unfamiliar situations.  “I’m Bruce Banner, here to see–”

“Bruce!”  A man was making his way across the lobby.  He was dressed in nice slacks and an expensive dress shirt, neatly pressed and form-fitting.  He had a red and silver silk tie and genuine leather shoes.  He looked to be in his middle forties with sleek brown hair that was a little on the long side but meticulously brushed and well kept.  He smiled widely, revealing two rows of perfectly straight, obnoxiously white teeth.  He was well-groomed and fairly good-looking, not at all the rumpled, messy, mad scientist Tony had pictured.  Tony had done his homework last night, ordering JARVIS to go through Lahey’s history and report it to him.  SHIELD’s intel wasn’t wrong.  Lahey had been nothing, a scientist with no major breakthroughs attached to his name since the early days of his career at Culver.  His papers were published in low-impact journals, and his conclusions were deemed suspect.  Tony wasn’t enough of an expert in the field to know if they really were groundless; bias existed in science, and he knew that unpopular or difficult concepts were often met with disdain no matter how accurate they were.  Nobody took Lahey seriously, even though by all rights he seemed a sharp, smart man with the potential to be a leading force in biochemistry.  His insistence on these fringe theories had ostracized him, and Bruce had been right about it: he hadn’t seemed to care.  He had blinders on.  He never guest-lectured.  He never attended conferences.  He turned down positions and opportunities, serious opportunities that could have garnered him acceptance.  He had been holed up this place, hiding from accolades as much as he was hiding from ridicule, totally content to just work unbothered.  His quest for his own Holy Grail had turned a promising career into a joke.  There was being narrow-minded, and then there was being plain stupid.  Obsession had ended many a career.

But this guy in front of him wasn’t at all what he’d expected.  What had Bruce called him?  A mouse?  A pushover?  He didn’t seem that way.

Bruce obviously had been expecting someone else, too.  “Dan?”

Lahey nodded as he stopped in front of their group.  He held out his hand, and Bruce took it.  “Good to see you!”

“Yeah.  Likewise.”  Bruce’s eyes were wide and he rubbed his other hand over his shortly cropped hair, visibly flummoxed.  Tony didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.  Then Bruce seemed to remember he had other people with him and leapt to introduce them.  “This is Tony Stark.  Tony, Dan Lahey.”

A manicured hand was confidently jutted toward him.  That million-watt smile was back, carrying up to cool and confident brown eyes.  Most people were at least a daunted when they met Tony Stark, maybe even a little awe-struck.  But Lahey was neither.  “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Stark.  You have no idea what an honor it is to have an engineer of your caliber grace our little institute.”

Tony didn’t want to seem strange, but he was too taken aback to respond with anything other than a mild “sure”.  Lahey released his hand and turned to his other two guests.  Bruce smiled and gestured to them.  “And this is Agent Clint Barton and Captain Steve Rogers.  They’re here on behalf of SHIELD.”

Lahey bypassed Clint’s hand like it wasn’t there and went straight for Steve’s.  He seemed extremely surprised and increasingly elated.  “Steve Rogers?  As in Captain America?  That Steve Rogers?”

Steve looked uncomfortable as he shook the other man’s hand.  “Nice to meet you.”

“Wow.  I mean, of course you are!  Just look at you.  Wow.  I can’t tell you what this means to me.”  A peek of that flustered, socially inept person Bruce had described before suddenly poked through the smooth and confident façade.  Lahey’s eyes light up like a kid in a candy store as he rigorously pumped Steve’s hand.  “You know, I got a hold of Doctor Erskine’s notes on the super soldier serum experiment back in grad school.  I wrote my thesis on the hypothetical infusion rates of the serum through the sarcolemma of myocytes and how the serum could have impacted mitochondrial output.  Right down to mitotic rates…  Seeing it in the flesh, though…  It’s really magnificent.”

Steve looked like he hadn’t understood a word of that.  He probably hadn’t.  “Thanks.”

“No, thank _you_.  Really.”  Steve was uncomfortable with the reverence, slipping his gaze to Clint who was trying to be stony but couldn’t entirely quash his amusement. 

Tony found the whole thing downright disturbing, though, and not just because Lahey _still_ hadn’t let go of Steve’s hand.  “Yup.  It’s awesome.”  He took Lahey’s arm and pulled him away, rolling his eyes over his shoulder at Rogers and Barton.  “So, Dan, mind if I call you that?  I thought you had stuff to show us.  You called us for our opinions, right, genuine scientific opinions from genuine scientific geniuses.”

That seemed to snap Lahey from his fanboy stupidity.  “Right.  Sorry about that.  Where are my manners?  Doug, buzz us through, huh?”  The security guard behind the desk nodded, and Lahey led them through the double doors on the other end of the lobby.  They walked down a long, spacious corridor, Bruce and he with Lahey and Steve and Clint behind them. 

Lahey’s gait was unhurried.  “So how have you been, Bruce?”

It was a logical thing to ask, especially since the two colleagues hadn’t seen each other in some time.  But Bruce seemed somewhat taken aback by it as though caring about social propriety and customs wasn’t typical of his friend.  He stuffed his hands into his pants, glancing at rooms as they passed them.  They were simply conference rooms and offices filled with desks, computers, and clutter.  Tony could tell he was nervous.  Bruce had various stages of nervous.  This was more than baseline anxiety, and it tempered Tony’s mood.  “Fine,” he answered.

“Things been going well for you?  I mean, since New York.”

“Well enough.  I should ask you the same question.  You seem… different,” Bruce remarked.  Lahey shot him a hurt glance.  “Not that that’s a bad thing.”

They stopped in front of an elevator.  Lahey flashed his ID badge to the scanner mounted on the wall beside the door.  “Money changes a man,” he answered like that could explain what seemed to be a radical personality shift.  Money could certainly do that.  So could power and fame and dozens of over things.  But Tony found more often than not that the fundamental nature of a man was immutable.  A man could open his eyes to things he’d ignored or a man could close them to things he didn’t want to see, and a man could try and change his ways, but the inclination to be good or bad, evil or pure…  He was pretty sure that was innate.  Maybe that was naïve, but the superhero business fared better in the world of black and white (as much as he disliked Rogers’ view of things), and it did make labelling the bad guys easier.  He liked figuring out mechanical problems and broken code that wouldn’t compile and bugs in his inventions…  He liked pounding that stuff out and flexing his incredible mental muscles.  He didn’t like having to figure people out.

Lahey was still talking.  “The old me wasn’t very good at schmoozing people.”

Bruce laughed at that.  It sounded forced.  The doors to the elevator opened and their small group stepped inside.  “I don’t think any of us were.”

“Well, not anybody who could call himself a scientist and mean it.  Remember Chuck Kiss-ass?”

At the others’ confused glances, Bruce supplied the story.  “Chuck Kizance.  He was an astrophysics post-doc at Culver.  Used to be friends with Selvig, actually.”

Lahey looked amused and disgusted at the same time, but he was making a show of it like he needed to prove to them (or himself) that he was worlds better.  “The guy was a substandard scientist but an A+ brown-noser.  He weaseled his way onto any grant he could as a ‘significant contributor’ or ‘consultant’.  If there was a butt to be kissed, he found it and puckered up.  Got the Dean of the University to give him tenure somehow.  Is he still there?”  Lahey asked.

Bruce shrugged.  “Not sure.  Probably.”

Lahey selected the lowest floor of the structure, three below the ground floor.  A sinking feeling of foreboding settled in Tony’s stomach, and it wasn’t just because the elevator was dropping at what felt like too fast a speed.  Lahey smiled innocently.  “Unfortunately, he was right about one thing.  Schmoozing seems to be the only way to get anywhere.  The ideas don’t matter so much.  Integrity?  BS.  Look at Apple or Facebook or any number of corporations selling people overpriced stuff they don’t need or services that provide no service at all.  Money finds its way to the beautiful people, to the people who can make themselves look good and marketable.  The rich get richer.  Right, Mr. Stark?”

Did this guy seriously just insult him?  _What the hell?_  The silence in the elevator was downright thick for a second as Tony tried to digest the fact that this peon, this _nobody_ , had tried to take him down a notch.   He opened his mouth to retort, but something grabbed his wrist.  He jolted a bit and looked to his left and saw Steve standing close to him, gripping his hand like iron, shaking his head slightly.  His blue eyes were narrowed with understanding but also with a vehement, silent plea that he let it go.  Normally Tony wouldn’t have restrained himself, least of all for Rogers, but this whole thing was so damn off-putting that he shut his mouth and tried not to stew too much.  “Yep,” he agreed.  “So this money that changed you…  Who did you have to schmooze to get it?”

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.  A narrow, long, gleaming hallway stretched before him, the tiles polished and the walls a bland color of taupe.  No windows, of course, since they’d descended into the basement.  It was downright claustrophobic.  “NIH.  Finally hit the lottery there.  I guess persistence does eventually pay off.”

Tony was becoming increasingly certain that that wasn’t true, that SHIELD was right to be concerned about this guy.  Maybe he wasn’t bad, but he veritably oozed instability.  The sort that easily bent to the whims of the criminally insane, at least.  “You guys said you were with SHIELD?” Lahey asked.  It was impossible to tell what he thought of that from his tone.  He didn’t seem threatened or bothered or even surprised.

“That’s right,” Clint said as they walked down the hall.  They passed lab rooms filled with workstations and computers and benches overloaded with test tubes and vials and pipettes and other equipment.  They were all empty.

“Why is SHIELD interested in me?  Not that that’s a problem.  Just curious.”

“SHIELD is always interested in what’s happening in the scientific community,” Clint coolly answered.

Lahey’s eyes widened in excitement, and he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.  That kid-at-Christmas look came back quickly.  “Is this because of the Extremis incident?  Because I gotta tell you: I would _love_ to get my hands on some of that stuff.  The possibilities are endless.”

The Extremis incident wasn’t common knowledge.  President Ellis being kidnapped and nearly murdered and the corruption concerning the Vice President were, of course, but the involvement of AIM and Extremis itself had not been made available to the media.  Rhodey had told him the fall-out in the military from the whole Mandarin mess was widespread, and the efforts to contain the consequences were in full-swing.  SHIELD knew, of course.  Tony had been dragged before Nick Fury and Maria Hill and Jasper Sitwell and some guy named Alexander Pierce to recount what had happened the morning after his Iron Legion had taken out Killian and his horde of Extremis soldiers.  He could think lowly of SHIELD all he wanted, but he knew they were damn good at keeping secrets.  How the hell had this guy found out about Extremis?

Steve was thinking the same thing.  “The existence of Extremis is classified,” he said.  His eyes were guarded.  “How did you learn about it?”

“Internet,” Lahey answered neutrally.  “Does SHIELD know there are resistance groups out there dumping secrets out to the public?  Ever heard of the Rising Tide?”  Tony hadn’t and made a mental note to have JARVIS research it later.  It wasn’t relevant, at any rate.  “Ask them how they found out.”

Clint was tired of this game.  “Where did you get your funding?”

“NIH.  I said that.”

“Are you aware that your grant from NIH is bogus?”

Lahey’s expression was again unreadable.  Bruce looked perplexed, like Lahey had been the worst poker player in the history of poker but had somehow managed a perfect, deadpan, indecipherable poker face.  “No.  What do you mean by ‘bogus’?”  He suddenly seemed suspicious, well after the fact that Tony would have been.  Four Avengers, two of which worked for the world’s largest covert security agency, had shown up in his lab, and only now the man was wary.  “What do you guys want?  I asked Bruce to come, and I don’t mind Mr. Stark – an intellect of his magnitude is always welcome.  But with all due respect I’m not interested in having SHIELD prying into my work.”

They reached the end of the hallway and stopped outside another set of double doors.  These were thicker, designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to force open.  Blast doors.  They as well were secured by a scanner and a keypad.  “We’re not trying to pry,” Steve said.  His tone was calm in response to Lahey’s distrust.  “We’re just interested in making sure you’re aware that SHIELD is watching you.”

Lahey’s face tightened in anger.  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The situation was escalating rapidly.  Bruce stepped between Steve and his friend.  His face was placid but his eyes were tense.  “Look, Dan, take it easy.  They’re not accusing you of anything.  If someone’s bribing you or coercing you or threatening you… they can help.  Having SHIELD looking over your shoulder isn’t always a bad thing.  It’s been okay for me.”  Bruce darted a pleading glance at Tony.  “And it has been for Tony, too.”

Lahey glanced among the four of them, and a moment of silence escaped.  It looked as if he was debating going any further.  The tension in the air was palpable.  Then he sagged slightly and seemed almost weary.  Defeated.  Tony couldn’t help but think that maybe AIM or someone worse really was threatening the guy.  He looked like he wanted to unburden himself.  He looked desperate.  “Bruce, I don’t want to get into trouble.  I just want to be left alone so I can work, you know?”

“I know.”

“I just…  I want your help with something.”

Bruce clasped Lahey on the shoulder, and that was saying something considering how much he typically disliked physical contact with other people.  “I know.  I’m here to help you.”

Lahey pressed his ID badge to the scanner and slid his fingers alone the touch screen of the key pad.  The locks disengaged with a heavy clank.  The doors swung open to a dozen men with shotguns, handguns, and rifles pointed at them.  Tony took a step back in shock, his eyes widening and his heart leaping to a frantic pace.  He felt more than saw Clint move behind him, swiftly drawing his gun from his jacket and pointing it at the slew of guards in front of him.  At the pounding of feet behind them Steve turned, dropping into a defensive stance to face more guards approaching from the rear.  He pressed tightly to Tony’s back.  “Oh, shit,” Tony whispered.

“I hate it when I’m right,” Clint muttered, narrowing his eyes into a cold and deadly glower.  They were outnumbered five to one.

Lahey turned around to face Bruce.  “Sorry,” he said.  He seemed genuinely apologetic, maybe ashamed that it had come to this.  “But I really do need you.”  Bruce was breathing heavily.  His hands were balled into fists at his side.  Tony felt his lungs lock up in his chest as Bruce’s eyes shifted, growing greener and greener by the moment.  “And I need you to keep the monster in the cage.”

Lahey reached into his own lab coat and pulled out a gun.  The sound of thunder echoed down the hallway, loud and violent.  It took Tony a minute to realize it was the gun firing.  It took him even longer to realize that Lahey had shot someone.  And it took even longer still for him to realize that Lahey had shot _him_.

Once he came to understand it, really let it sink in, there was pain.   _A lot_ of pain.  He pressed his hand to his stomach without thinking to, and when he looked down in shock and alarm, he found his fingers covered in slick and sticky red.  “That’s not good,” he whispered. 

He really couldn’t say or do anything else.  Everything was spinning and something disgusting came up his throat.  It tasted an awful lot like blood.  The pain knocked his legs out from under him and he went down hard.  Somebody caught him.  Somebody was calling his name.  It sounded like Steve.  Steve was holding him, shaking him.  Telling him to hang on.  Ordering him to.

He’d never been very good at following orders.  That was another reason he and Steve didn’t get along.  The blackness came in, harsh and hungry, and he let go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Little warning for the squeamish: there are some descriptions of blood and things in this chapter. Nothing beyond the rating.

“Don’t do it, Bruce,” Lahey warned.  The muzzle of the gun was smoking but unwavering as he kept it firmly aimed on Tony’s body.  At this close range, a shot to the head would be deadly and too fast to prevent.  “Don’t.  I can kill him before you can kill me, and don’t think I won’t.  But I don’t want to.  Please, Bruce.”

Bruce wasn’t listening.  His chest was heaving, his hands squeezing into fists at his sides, his skin turning sickeningly green.  He was losing himself, and the Hulk was threatening.  He was losing control.

Steve couldn’t let that happen.  There were a dozen guns trained on Tony and Clint; at point blank range, neither he nor Bruce would be able to move fast enough to protect their friends from being killed.  No matter how fast and strong the Hulk was, he couldn’t outrun a bullet.  In these close confines, there was no room to fight.  “Doctor Banner,” Steve called.  He tried to keep his voice calm and controlled despite the fear pulsing through his body.  “Doctor Banner.”  Bruce didn’t move, didn’t turn, didn’t even look away from Lahey.  His face was a picture of wrath, contorted and twisted with barely restrained rage.  Tony groaned in Steve’s embrace, pale and rasping for breath, his eyes tightly closed in agony.  Steve pushed one gloved hand as tightly as he dared over the bleeding gunshot wound in Stark’s abdomen and reached the other toward Bruce.  He latched onto the physicist’s arm and held firmly.  “Bruce.”

Furious eyes, green and malignant, shot toward him.  Despite the rage simmering in that hateful glower, Steve wasn’t afraid.  He couldn’t be.  Bruce tried to pull away as though his touch was painful or repulsive, but Steve was too strong and too determined to be shrugged off so easily.  Now that he’d succeeded in getting Banner to look at him, he held steadfast.  He could feel Bruce’s heart pound beneath his fingers where they were wrapped around the other man’s wrist.  He could see each charged breath, each thread of Bruce’s control unraveling under the immense strain of holding back.  He prayed his own strength would be enough to convince the Hulk to stay inside.  “Stay with us, Bruce.  Please,” Steve softly said.  “Tony needs you.”

That was enough.  In a blink, Bruce’s brown eyes were back, weak and uncertain at first.  But then they fell upon Tony’s bleeding body and _focused_.  Uncaring of the multitude of guns aimed at them, he dropped to a crouch beside Steve.  “God,” he whispered, his gaze widening and his face paling further at the horrific sight before him.  He turned a blazing glare upon Lahey.  “You want my help?  You let me help him first.”

Bruce’s words allowed no room for argument, no chance for debate.  Steve held his breath, praying that Lahey would agree.  Tony was hemorrhaging badly, his skin waxy with shock.  He was shivering and Steve could feel his heart racing.  Blood slipped from the side of his mouth as it flooded his throat.  Steve propped him up further and tipped him to help drain it.  He had seen more than his fair share of gunshot wounds during the war and his time with SHIELD.  He knew a bad one when he saw one.  This was a _very_ bad one.

Lahey watched Tony suffer uncaringly for a long moment, a seeming eternity of doubt and anger.  Steve gritted his teeth and held Tony tighter.  Stark wasn’t going to die in his arms.  He wouldn’t let that happen.  It was in Lahey’s best interests to make sure it didn’t.  Steve had a sinking suspicion that the scientist needed Tony to keep Bruce and himself in line.  If Tony died, there would be no incentive for Banner to keep the monster in check.  And Lahey, frankly, had _no_ idea what Captain America could do when his back was up against a wall.  “Alright,” Lahey said.  He nodded toward the soldiers, and they backed away ever so slightly.  The guns never lowered or faltered in their deadly aim, however.

Steve didn’t wait for further permission.  He stood in one smooth, powerful motion, lifting Stark in his arms and roughly pushing through the soldiers.  He kept Tony shielded against his chest as he charged through the line of men.  Bruce was right behind him.  “Not you,” Lahey ordered.  Clint stopped short, surrounded and separated from them by the guards.  Gun barrels were shoved in his face.  His own remained unchangingly pointed at Lahey despite the threat around him.  Clint was never daunted.  “Drop the gun.  Hands on your head.”

Steve glanced over his shoulder and met Clint’s gaze.  They’d become so attuned to each other from the many missions they’d worked together over the last year that a single glance was all he needed to tell the other agent to be still.  Clint wasn’t pleased, as tense as a coiled spring, but he stood down.  The situation was intractable, and for now they needed to cooperate or Stark would die.  He set his weapon to the floor and raised his hands, his eyes dark with helpless anger.  The guards roughly searched him, and another man approached with a zip tie.

Somebody yanked Steve’s shield off his back.  Steve stiffened, struggling to keep his emotions controlled.  Any sudden movement could get them killed.  And any sign of panic could incite the Hulk.  Steve liked and trusted Bruce; he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy, a veritable genius, shy and maybe a little anxious but wise and unimposing and friendly.  Steve couldn’t be sure, however, how well he had the Hulk under control.  Shooting Tony was a double-edged sword.  It was evil of the worst sort to use an innocent man’s life as leverage, but it was worse still to play a game as deadly as this with no assurances that this plan to hold the monster in by appealing to Bruce’s friendship with Tony would work.  Whatever Lahey wanted, he was unhinged and clearly desperate to get it. 

Lahey pointed the gun at Steve.  “After you.”

They moved beyond the double doors and into a spacious lab.  It was circular, the wide area encasing a central chamber that was pitch black.  Nothing inside there was visible beyond the gleaming glass of the windows surrounding it.  Storerooms, smaller labs, and offices fanned out along the circumference of the lab.  The walls were sleek white, and harsh fluorescent lighting bathed everything with a painful, bleached intensity.  Metallic lab benches and work tables filled the room, cluttered with vials and microscopes and pipettes and other equipment.  Computer screens lined a main console that surrounded the chamber, and other terminals were spread throughout the room.  It looked expensive, well-funded, and state-of-the-art.  Numerous lab assistants watched the scene with wide eyes, surprised but not afraid enough or bold enough to help.

“Here,” Bruce said.  He didn’t waste a moment, sweeping his arm along one of the benches and unceremoniously knocking everything to the floor.

As gently as he could, Steve laid Tony’s limp body along the shining metal surface.  Tony groaned in pain, gasping for air, flailing weakly.  Steve caught his bloody hand in his own, laying his other palm against the wound again and putting pressure on it.  Stark barked out a hoarse scream.  “Easy, Tony,” Steve soothed.  “Easy.”

Bruce was immediately at his side.  He pressed his fingers to Tony’s carotid artery, counting for a torturous moment.  Steve breathed heavily, watching as Tony’s face whitened further.  He gurgled on the blood trapped in his throat, choking and sputtering, grabbing at Steve’s forearm.  His eyelids fluttered.  He was trying to speak, but he couldn’t.  “Tony?  Tony, can you hear me?” Bruce asked.  Stark seized.  “Get him on his side!”  Bruce turned flashing eyes to Lahey.  “I need bandages!  A first aid kit!  Supplies!  Something, god damn it!”

Lahey still held the gun on Bruce, unmoving and uncaring.  Steve glanced between him and Banner, keeping his hands gentle as he held Tony’s shivering and convulsing form steady on his left side.  He traded places with Bruce, the physicist’s hands flying to the gunshot wound as Steve supported Tony’s head to allow the blood to dribble from his mouth.  “He’s fading fast,” Steve whispered.

“Damn it, Dan.  If he dies…”

“Get him what he needs,” Lahey snapped to his lab assistants.

Bruce looked back to Steve.  “There an exit wound?”  Steve looked at Tony’s back where it was against his own midriff and saw nothing and shook his head.  Bruce was extremely worried.  There was already blood all over the table, veritably pouring from the injury.  He ripped open Tony’s button-down shirt and peered closer.  “This is bad.  Really, _really_ bad.  He needs surgery.”

“Not an option,” Lahey responded.  Steve didn’t miss the gun shaking slightly.

Bruce’s control waned again.  He turned and rounded on his old friend, wild with rage and fear.  “He’s bleeding out!  He needs surgery!”  Bruce’s chest heaved, and his skin was tinted again.  Steve watched helplessly as the situation deteriorated anew, darting his eyes to Clint who was still surrounded and held at gun point.  Barton was on his knees, his hands bound behind his back, and utterly incapable of helping them.  “Let us take him out of here.  Get him to a hospital.  It’s his only chance–”

“I can’t do that.  What I need you to do is too important, and this is _my_ only chance,” Lahey said.

“You selfish son of a bitch!  You goddamn–”  The sound of Tony choking was the only thing that cut through the murderous haze in Bruce’s mind, and he was back to the table, gasping through clenched teeth and visibly struggling, _fighting_ , to stay himself.  His hands were curled around the edge of the table, pressing so hard that the metal surface bent.  He looked up at Steve, his countenance trapped in a spasm of pain and effort and anguish. 

Steve reached across the table and grabbed Bruce’s hand firmly and brought it back to Tony.    “Don’t let him go,” he implored, shaking his head slightly as he held Banner’s gaze and _refused_ to look away.  “Letting him out won’t solve anything.”

Bruce swallowed and lifted his chin and drew what seemed to be a cleansing breath.  “Do you have an ultrasound scanner?”

Lahey nodded.  His assistants came back with bandages and tools covered in sterile wrappers and an entire cart full of supplies.  A little corner of Steve’s mind was really taken aback.  He didn’t know much about research, let alone research done in the advanced scientific and technological environments of this new century, but this didn’t seem right.  Why the hell would a chemist have this sort of medical equipment?  However, there was no time to wonder, and it was damn lucky nonetheless.  “Get his jacket off.  Gently,” Bruce instructed.  Steve did as he was told, working Tony’s arms from the sleeves on his blazer and dumping the blood-soaked garment to the floor.

“What are you going to do?” Steve asked.

Bruce was using a few bandages to try and catch the blood pouring out of Tony’s abdomen.  The wound was about an inch above his navel, a small, circular opening that seemed more innocuous than it actually was.  Gunshot wounds to the stomach were tricky; Steve had seen men die of them quickly, die of them slowly, die of them in pain and die of them without even being aware they’d been hit.  He knew enough about emergency medical care in the field to know that a great deal of vital organs were located in that area of the body.  Too low and a bullet could rip through the intestines and stomach and spill bacteria into the bloodstream.  Too high and the liver, spleen, kidneys, and major arteries were at risk.  Considering the amount of bright, red blood spilling from Tony, it was obvious an artery of some sort had been hit.

Bruce glanced at him.  “Steve, I need you to help me,” he said breathlessly.  “We gotta try to find the bleed – pray that there’s only _one_ – and close it.”

The world seemed to close in on them, on Steve and Bruce and Tony dying in front of them.  Steve failed to digest that for a minute.  “You mean…”

“If we don’t, he’ll die.”  The enormity of that was devastating.  Steve had fought through World War II, and though the Howling Commandos had not often been wounded, he’d witnessed some fairly devastating injuries to other soldiers.  He’d shot men, both during the war and on assault missions for SHIELD.  Hell, he’d been shot himself more times than he cared to remember.  But never so seriously.  And nobody had ever asked something like this of him, to aid in some crazy, ad-hoc surgery to save a man’s life.  He was scared, and after battling Nazis and HYDRA and invading aliens that wasn’t something he was much anymore.

Steve swallowed thickly through a dry throat, inhaled deeply to center himself and slow his thundering heart, and nodded.  “Tell me what you need me to do.”

One of the lab assistants returned with another smaller cart.  Bruce immediately snatched it and pulled a probe with a bulbous head from it.  It was connected to a tablet computer.  “We have to move fast.  I need you to get him back on his back but watch his breathing.  If he starts struggling, lean him up to drain his airway.”  Steve nodded.  “Okay.  Go.”

Steve rolled Tony back.  Immediately Stark began coughing, blood splattering from his mouth, and Steve crouched at the head of the table and propped him slightly against his chest.  “Easy,” he softly said.  He took Tony’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.  The inventor seemed partially conscious at best.  “Just keep fighting.  You’ll be alright.”  He could almost picture Tony’s eyes fluttering open and his acidic tone.  _Bullshit._   But Stark’s face was empty and gray and unmoving.  He wasn’t arguing for once.  He was silent and still and slipping away from them.

Bruce switched on the machine and pressed the probe to Tony’s abdomen.  Steve couldn’t quite see the screen from his vantage, but there was a black and white image animating as Bruce moved the scanner left and right over Stark’s belly.  Then he blanched.  “It’s worse than I thought,” he announced gravely.  “God, none of this is sterile…”  Despite the fact his hands were covered in blood, Bruce pulled a pair of blue latex gloves on.  He shoved the box at Steve.  Steve fumbled to pull his fingerless combat gloves off and get the others on.  While he did, Bruce shuffled through the supplies, pulling out scalpels and other tools, a long needle and medical grade sutures.  “Oxygen?” he asked the lab assistants, who were watching ashen-faced and horrified.  A young woman nodded and ran off.  Bruce pressed the ultrasound probe to Tony’s stomach again.  “There’s a lot of damage in there.  I think the bullet’s lodged near his spine.”

Cold fear stabbed into Steve’s heart.  “Does that mean–”

“Can’t worry about that now,” Bruce interrupted, glancing between the ultrasound screen and the wound.  “There.  Damn it.  In the aorta.”  Bruce whirled and glanced furiously at the men holding them captive.  “I need another set of hands!”  Nobody moved.  The guns on them never even twitched.  Steve gritted his teeth, glancing at Clint who looked like it was physically torturous to stay kneeling.  It probably was.  “What the hell is the matter with you people?  He’s dying!  Help us!  _Come on!_ ”

The monster threatened, and Tony choked again.  Clint’s loud, angry voice rose over the thundering of their hearts.  “Let me help them!  Let me help, goddamn it!”  He was spitting rage and curses, struggling against the men holding him despite the slew of weapons pointed at him.  “He’s going to die!  You bastards!  You think you’re going to be able to control the Hulk if he dies?”

Steve shook his head, eyes wide in fear, as Bruce wavered again.  “Bruce!” he yelled to bring Banner back, struggling to hold Stark still as he vomited blood.  “Help me!”  If Bruce lost it now…

But he didn’t.  He forgot about the men threatening them and holding Clint prisoner and turned around and unpackaged and uncapped a scalpel.  “Hold him,” he ordered Steve stiffly.  “Hold him!”  Steve draped an arm around Tony’s chest, keeping a hand under the inventor’s chin and holding him as inclined as possible.  Stark’s head lolled against Steve’s shoulder, blood dripping from slack lips and down Steve’s arm.  Steve grabbed the probe again and held it steady as Bruce started to cut.  And Tony, as unconscious as he seemed, started to scream.

“Hold on,” Steve softly said, tightening his grip as much as he dared as Stark involuntarily struggled.  He could hurt Tony more if he lost control of his own strength, and the inclination to hang on with everything he had was nearly overwhelming.  He knew better than anyone how much surgery without anesthesia or pain medication hurt.  “Just hold on, Stark.  I’ve got you.  I’ve got you.”

If Tony heard him, it wasn’t obvious.  He trembled and moaned and cried, not quite conscious but not gone enough to be removed from the agony.  Steve kept his eyes on Tony’s face; as strong and brave as he was, he didn’t think he could stand to watch Bruce cut into the stomach of another man.  Of a teammate and friend.  _Friend_.  It was no secret that he and Tony didn’t get along; the man was too flashy, too loud and arrogant, too sure of himself.  It didn’t help that Stark was someone who reminded Steve of everything he had lost by simple virtue of what and who he was.  That was hard to get past.  Every time he saw Tony his thoughts were immediately clouded by bitterness and grief and an unwitting comparison between Tony and Howard.  Howard and his son were more fundamentally similar than they were different, which was fairly ironic considering Tony thought himself to be nothing like his father who he apparently despised.  Underneath all the wealth and brilliance and narcissism, Tony was a good man, as much as Howard had been if not more, and a hero in his own right.  And a good man didn’t deserve to suffer and die like this.

 _I’m not going to let you die._   Steve held Tony as he writhed and Bruce cut.  Bile burned the back of Steve’s throat as his eyes involuntarily went to the bloody mess under Bruce’s hands.  “Keep him still,” Bruce hoarsely ordered.  “Christ, there’s so much blood…”  He was trying vehemently to remain calm and collected, but Steve saw his hands shaking and the sweat beading on his face.  He worked to mop up the blood as it poured from Tony’s abdomen with the bandages, but it was difficult; there was too much and they really did need another pair of hands.  Every second Bruce spent trying to stem the blood loss was one less they could use to try and repair the injury.  Steve let go of the probe and helped, snatching another bandage and pressing it around the wound but never sacrificing his grip on Tony’s shoulders.  “How’s his pulse?”

Steve stretched his hand around Tony’s neck.  The heartbeat beneath his fingers was fast and weak.  “Not good.”

“He’s in hypovolemic shock,” Bruce said bitterly.  His hands were flying, and perspiration dripped from his brow.  His eyes were narrowed in anger.  “That’ll kill him, and I can’t do anything to stop it.  He needs blood.”

“Bruce, easy,” Steve comforted softly.  “Stay calm.  You can do this.  We can do this.”  It sounded pathetic to his own ears.  He was saying the same damn empty assurances over and over again like repetition could make it true and keep the Hulk contained. He would say it a thousand times with a level voice and an encouraging expression if it would help.  This was what Bruce needed to hear.  Tony was his friend, obviously the closest and truest he had.  Bruce was terrified of losing him and losing himself.  He shot frantic eyes to Steve, but Steve only offered a small nod.  “He’s not going to die.”

Bruce drew a deep breath, one that trembled and seemed to herald him coming completely apart, but he nodded, too.  The lab assistant arrived with an oxygen mask attached to a small tank.  Steve leaned back, sacrificing his grip on the bandages to help the mortified young woman get the mask around Tony’s face.  She fiddled with the tank for a second more before skittering away.  Immediately oxygen flooded the mask to help Stark breathe.  But it didn’t seem to help much.  Steve felt Tony weaken against him, felt the pain-induced tension fade from his limbs.  He didn’t dare pull his fingers away from Tony’s pulse point under his jaw, needing to feel every beat.  But they were getting slower and weaker.  Tony’s breath was a pathetic wheeze that puffed against the oxygen mask.  Each halting movement of his chest was a strained struggle for air, and Steve feared one of the miserable gasps would prove his last.  “Hang on, Tony,” he implored.  “Hang on…”

“Got it,” Bruce finally gasped.  Steve could hardly think for his relief.  “I need your hand here.  If we don’t get this stitched…”  He didn’t need to explain further.  His own hand was deep inside flesh.  Steve hesitated for only a moment, but he followed Bruce’s orders.  “There’s a tear in the artery.  Can you feel it?  Get your finger on it!  Hurry!”

Steve did feel it.  He held still, quelling the urge to be sick, ignoring how the room spun around them and how his own heart raced and roared in his ears.  He stuck his index finger to the tiny, pulsing tear and plugged it while Bruce scrambled to prepare to stitch it.  Tony was dying in his arms with his hand literally holding the life in his body.  He’d never felt quite this afraid or uncertain of himself, but he did his best to not let it show.  He _couldn’t_ let it show.  Bruce needed him to stay calm, and he would try his hardest to do it.

Bruce was ready.  “Just keep pressure on it.  When I tell you to, let go.”  A few agonizingly long moments escaped, Bruce quickly stitching and wiping away blood and using the ultrasound to guide him.  He was driven, concentration finally and _thankfully_ trumping emotion and directing hands that were now steady and confident.  Steve didn’t feel so endowed with courage at that moment, but he held fast.  He could feel Tony’s heart struggling, the hot blood surging against his fingers and the cold chill of sweat sticking uncomfortably to his skin beneath his uniform.  Steady hearts and hands were all that stood between Tony and death.  His steady hands and Bruce’s.  “Okay, let go.”

It was more of a relief than he wanted to admit.  He knew the serum made it impossible, but his finger and most of the rest of his hand felt cramped as he pulled it away from Tony’s insides.  He was tingling and numb and fumbling as he took up another bandage and tried vainly to soak up and wipe away blood.  There was _so much_.  “Steve…  Steve!” Bruce cried.  “He’s not breathing!”

Horror washed over Steve.  “Tony?  Tony!”  There was no response.  Steve moved fast, standing to his full height and lowering Stark’s upper body to the bloody table.  He pulled the oxygen mask aside, tipped Tony’s chin back, pinched shut his nose, and took a deep breath.  Then he covered Tony’s mouth with his own and forced the air in his body.  “Stark, don’t do this!”

“Does he have a pulse?”

Steve paused in breathing to jab his fingers to Tony’s neck again.  “No.”  He balled his bloody hands together over Tony’s chest and started compressions, mindful of his strength as he rhythmically pushed on Tony’s ribs.

“Shit.”  Bruce was _flying_ now, his fingers a blur as he stitched and closed wounds and repaired skin and muscle.  “Come on, come on, _come on!_ ”

Steve forced himself to stay calm, counting and breathing and counting and breathing and _praying_.  “Tony, don’t do this,” he begged.  “You’re not dying on us.  You hear me, Stark?”  But Tony was unresponsive.  Not moving or talking or seeing or breathing.  For all intents and purposes he was dead.  _No.  No chance in hell!_

Bruce closed him up and frantically set things aside.  He pressed bandages around the wound quickly and rifled like a mad man through the medical supplies.  He slammed an AED to the table, as well as a few syringes.  Atropine.  He injected Tony and readied the defibrillator, pressing square, white pads to Tony’s chest that were connected by thin wires to the small machine.  “Stand back,” he ordered Steve.  Tony’s body jerked as the AED fired.  Bruce pressed his fingers to Tony’s neck again and then shook his head.  “Keep going.  Let the epi circulate.”

It was hard to be patient.  Steve delivered another breath and continued CPR, trying not to think or feel or do anything besides concentrate on keeping blood moving through Tony’s body.  A torturous eternity passed before Bruce demanded, “Clear!”  And he activated the AED again.

Tony gasped and lurched off the table.  Steve could hardly believe his eyes, grabbing Tony’s flailing and shuddering body before he hurt himself or fell.  “Get the oxygen back on him,” Bruce ordered hoarsely.  “Hurry!  Hurry!”

Steve reached for the mask, propping Tony against him again to aid in his breathing and pressing it over the other man’s mouth and nose.  Bruce measured his pulse, trembling as he counted, and his face broke in joy.  “Thank God…” he whispered, closing his eyes.  “Thank God.”

Steve cradled Tony against him, his own relief sucking him dry of energy for a moment.  A hand patted his forearm.  Tony’s hand.  Tony’s eyes were open to slits.  He was okay.  He was alive.  His quivering fingers slid down Steve’s forearm and grabbed the soldier’s hand and squeezed tight.  “Rogers,” he whispered weakly.  “Please tell me you didn’t kiss me.”

Steve gave an exasperated laugh.  “I might have.”

Tony’s reddened lips shifted into a weak, feeble version of his normally teasing grin, and his eyes slipped shut again.  “So strong… and handsome and–”

“Shut up, Stark,” Steve said with a smile, and Tony smiled gratefully, too, and went to sleep.

* * *

Lahey let them have a few precious minutes to stabilize Tony.  Steve held him, keeping a watchful eye on the billionaire’s breathing and a comforting arm around the other man, while Bruce worked quickly to finish stitching the things he’d abandoned for the sake of time.  When he finished with that, he applied better dressings to the wound.  Stark wasn’t out of the woods by a longshot; he needed blood badly and more intensive surgery performed by medical experts to truly deal with the internal damage.  There was a bullet pressed against his spine, so the chances of any number of serious complications (nerve damage or even paralysis) were dreadfully high.  He should have been in an ICU, not lying on a hard, unforgiving table trapped in an underground lab at the mercy of a mad scientist and his henchmen.

But he was breathing and the bleeding was under control.  Given the circumstances, that was the best they could do.  And that was all Lahey was going to let them do.

The moment Bruce finished bandaging Tony’s abdomen, the soldiers surrounded the table.  Guns were raised again, violent and threatening.  Steve breathed sharply through his nose, grinding his teeth together in anger.  He carefully lowered Stark’s shoulders and head before putting himself between the guns and Tony’s unconscious body as much as possible.  Lahey leveled his weapon at Bruce.  “I let you help him,” he said, “and now you have to help me.”

Bruce stiffened.  “He needs to be in a hospital,” he said slowly and evenly.  He was rattled and struggling anew to keep his temper in check.  With the immediate threat to Tony’s life removed, his anger was settling in again, hard and quick.  But the shock of it all had dulled it, and it seemed, for the moment anyway, that he was rational and in control.  “You have to let us take him out of here.”

“No,” Lahey responded, “not until you do what I need you to.”  He pointed the gun at Tony again.

“You son of a bitch.”  Steve watched Bruce glare at Lahey.  Then he glanced to Clint, who was still bound and on his knees amidst the guards.  The archer was furious, his expression stony and his form stiff and unyielding.  Steve knew Clint too well to not see the rage and the desire to do _something_ to stop and punish these men that was bright in his eyes.  He caught his friend’s gaze for a moment and gave a small shake of his head.  They were still outnumbered and with an injured man.  Obviously these thugs weren’t afraid to shoot them.  Lahey had struck hard and fast and first and permanently tied their hands.  And the smug bastard knew it.

Bruce was obviously coming to the same aggravating conclusions.  “What do you want from me?”

Lahey smiled.  Again there was a flash of something beneath all of his confidence and control.  Glee.  Euphoria.  Steve couldn’t say, but it didn’t seem particularly sane or remotely good.  “I didn’t want it to come to this, you know,” Lahey assured.  “I was just going to threaten Stark to get you to help.”

“Like that makes it better?” Bruce snapped in disgust.

“No,” Lahey admitted, a little downcast.  “Well, your unexpected escort from SHIELD threw a wrench in my plans.  But I think it’ll turn out for the best.”

Steve didn’t like the sound of that.  Bruce was losing his patience.  “Enough.  Just tell me what this is about.”

“The science.”

“Then what’s with the hired help?  What’s with shooting an innocent man and holding us hostage?  This isn’t _you_ , Dan, at least not the nice guy who I remember.  That nice guy would never hurt anyone.  Whatever AIM is promising you isn’t worth this!”

Lahey seemed unsure for a brief moment.  The gun wavered slightly.  “They didn’t promise me anything.  They just believe in my ideas.  They have faith.”

“They’re using you, Doctor Lahey,” Steve said firmly, calmly, “just like they used Maya Hansen and who knows how many other scientists.  They’re trying to buy your allegiance.”  Lahey’s eyes flashed in doubt.  Steve wondered if maybe he knew Hansen; they were experts in the same field, after all.  Perhaps knowing what happened to her would help get through to him.  “They murdered her the minute they got what they want, and what they want are weapons that will hurt people.”

“This isn’t science,” Bruce added.  “Stop.  Please.”

Lahey shook his head.  “I can’t.  There’s no going back, Bruce.  There’s only going forward.”  He turned and strolled to the main console surrounding the central part of the room.  His fingers flew over one of the keyboards, and the monitors came to life.  And light flooded the chamber beyond.

“Oh, no,” Bruce murmured.

Inside there was a gleaming silver table, not unlike one of the workbenches outside, only it was obviously meant for someone to lay on it.  There were restraints on the sides and at the feet and some sort of apparatus built under it that looked like it would encase whoever was unfortunate enough to be on the table in metallic arms.  The chamber was circular but not very big, the walls a smooth white.  There were a few carts inside filled with tools.  “Dan, what the hell are you doing?” Bruce murmured, dismay and disgust filling his eyes as he rapidly analyzed the setup before them.  It was a dumb question because it was disturbingly obvious what Lahey was doing.  He was experimenting on people. 

“I’m trying to bring the human mind to the next stage of its evolution,” Lahey answered matter-of-factly like that should have been obvious to Banner.  Clearly it wasn’t, and the other man grew impatient and irritated.  “My whole life’s work is right here, and this is my one moment to make it happen.  To finally prove that it _can_ happen.  I’ve been trying for years to bridge the gap between biological and emotional states – I _know_ it’s possible.  You do, too.”

“Dan–”

But Lahey was rushing onward, and his voice dripped in ambition.  In obsession.  “The mind can affect the physical world, alter the state of matter, _bend_ the laws of physics.  It’s not impossible.  I think I can achieve it.  This drug I’ve made…  Well, even a modest amount of a watered down version took the old, weak Dan Lahey and turned him into somebody much stronger and smarter and more capable.”

Bruce blanched.  “Dan, don’t tell me you’ve been…”

“Everything in life is based upon our perceptions of this world!  And our perceptions are colored by our emotions.  We want something, so we make it happen.  We hate something, so we destroy it.  We love something, so we covet it or protect it or cherish it.  There are so many things, so many phenomena out there, that can’t be explained by physics or chemistry or biology.  What made Captain America so good and the Hulk so bad when the science behind how each was made is nearly the same?”  Bruce flushed and glanced at Steve.  They were both trying not to get swept into this argument, but it was difficult to ignore the barrage of desperate ideas pounding at them.  “The mind powers the body.  Why can’t it power other things?  Emotions are the most meaningful part of what makes us human, what gives us the will and strength to shape our world as we see fit.  It’s not our DNA or our brains.  It’s our souls.”

“This is crazy.  You need to stop.”

“It’s not crazy!  _Look_ at all the things in the last century that people thought could _never_ happen.  If it hadn’t been for Einstein or Curie or Erskine or Hawking or Watson and Crick…”  He released a short breath as if this logic was sturdy enough to support his violent actions.  As if equating himself to some of the most influential geniuses of the last century could make this _okay_.  “If someone had told them their ideas were crazy and they’d given up, where would we be?”

“They didn’t shoot people to prove a point,” Bruce snapped.  “They didn’t kill people to prove a point!”

“You nearly did.  You nearly killed yourself,” Lahey rebutted.

“And I’ve regretted it every second since!”  Bruce sucked in a deep breath, trying to contain his rage.  “Whatever it is you want to do, there are other ways to do it.”

“No.  Don’t you think I’ve tried?  _Every_ other attempt has killed our subjects.”

Steve’s blood ran cold.  He looked from Lahey to Bruce and found the physicist’s face white and horrified.  “Every other attempt,” Bruce repeated softly.  _How many other attempts have there been?_ Steve wondered in anger and revulsion.  What sort of sick monster was this guy?  Then Bruce’s expression tightened in dread, his mind obviously racing.  His quick eyes scanned the chamber before them, the bed with the restraints and the equipment.  “What do you…  No.  No, you can’t.  The Hulk will _never_ let you–”

“I know,” Lahey interrupted.  “Don’t think it didn’t occur to me.  But the Hulk’s not a pure sample.  Just too many variables confound the data.  And the infusion’s not the problem.  It’s the Gamma exposure.  That’s why I need _you_ , Bruce.  I need you to help me get the Gamma exposure right.  I don’t know if I’m using too much or not enough or initiating it at the wrong time…”  How many people had died in Lahey’s pursuit of those answers?  It was beyond upsetting, and it was even worse that the man didn’t seem to care.  It was all just _data_ to him.  “The drug’s my field of expertise, but this is yours.  You’re the only person alive who has used this amount of Gamma to stimulate biochemical absorption and genetic integration successfully.”

“Successfully?  There was nothing successful about it!”

“Yes, there was.  Your emotions, your anger, became the starting point for a chain of powerful biochemical transformations that turn your human body into the most indestructible creature on this planet, maybe even in this galaxy.  _That is success._ ”

Bruce looked confused and horrified at the same time.  Incredulous at the reasoning coming out of a man he’d once respected as a colleague, peer, and scientist.  He was hurt and betrayed and riddled with disbelief.  He wanted to argue more but seemed to recognize that it was futile.  Maybe he was realizing that this sort of lunacy and depravity had always been part of his friend, just carefully hidden by weakness or fear or seeming amity.  Maybe not.  It didn’t really matter.  And it didn’t really matter if Lahey was being funded by AIM or another terrorist or extremist organization.  This man was dangerous in his own right.  Steve had seen and fought against his fair share of evil maniacs in his time.  Schmidt.  Nazi and HYDRA warlords and scientists.  Zola.  Loki.  He knew the gleam he saw in Lahey’s eyes.  It was the stuff of nightmares, madness that made wars and threatened innocents.  There was no reaching men like this, no reasoning with them and no redemption for their actions.  However Lahey had come to be this way, he needed to be stopped.

Bruce shook his head after a seeming eternity of tense silence.  “I’m not going to help you hurt an innocent person,” he resolutely declared.

“I thought you could do it on me,” Lahey said.

Bruce was mortified.  “No, I won’t.  Damn it, Dan, _listen_ to me!  I’d take it all back if I could!  I don’t care what you think or how sure you are.  It’s not worth your life!  The Hulk should never have happened.  I was arrogant and foolish and so full of myself that I never thought for a second that I could be wrong.  And I was wrong.  What happened to me was a freak accident.”

“I know.”  Lahey shook his head.  “But what happened to him wasn’t.”

The room was completely silent again.  People were staring.  It took Steve a moment to realize they were staring at him, that Lahey was referring to _him_.  “What?” he asked.

Of course Banner figured it out before he did.  “No,” he said.  His face flooded green again.  “No!  You can’t do that!”

“Like I said, I think this will work out better.  Not what I intended, but better.  You brought me the perfect sample.  The ideal test subject.  Somebody who has a chance to survive my procedure.  It’s the only way I’ll ever know if I’m right.  It’s almost like…”  That gleeful, almost whimsical, expression returned to Lahey’s face.  He seemed like a caricature of a villain, like a character out of a bad movie.  “Like this was meant to be.”

And then Steve understood what Lahey meant.  He swallowed thickly, feeling as if he’d just been punched in the gut.  There were guns pointed at him and at Bruce.  Guns pointed at Tony.  His heart thudded shallowly in his chest, and the bright lights in the lab were painful and blaring and blinding.  He knew the truth, what Lahey was suggesting, but he stupidly needed to question because his heart was miles behind his mind.  “You want me to…”  He couldn’t make himself think it let alone say it.

“Steve, don’t!” Clint yelled.  “No!”

“I won’t help you,” Bruce hissed.  The Hulk’s voice was meshed with Banner’s now.  Muscles were bulging beneath Bruce’s blood-soaked clothes.  The monster was getting stronger and stronger.  “I won’t!”

“You don’t have a choice,” Lahey reminded, and his men moved closer to Tony.  Steve couldn’t protect him.  Not with the number of guns on them both at close range.  “And neither do you, Captain.  Step away.”

Steve was still, narrowing his eyes and gritting his teeth.  The guard who’d been manhandling Clint was there, his rifle focused firmly on Tony’s barely moving chest.  As if that was not serious enough, there was a loud scuffle as three more guards hauled Clint to his feet and shoved him closer to the table on which Tony lay.  His midriff was slammed into the end of the table, jostling Stark’s unconscious form.  “Get your goddamn hands off me,” Barton snarled.  His hazel eyes flashed furiously.

“Is this man your friend?” Lahey asked dispassionately.

Steve didn’t answer, _wouldn’t answer_ , but they already knew the truth.  Another one of the guards stuck the muzzle of his gun to Clint’s right shoulder and pulled the trigger.  The shot echoed through the room, loud and booming, and Bruce roared.

“Alright.  Alright!” Steve yelled.  The minute he moved away from the table, one of the soldiers pushed forward and jabbed his gun to Tony’s forehead.  The inventor was too deeply asleep to notice, let alone struggle.

Clint’s face was contorted in pain.  His shoulder was bleeding profusely, but he didn’t fall or stagger or even seem to notice.  He raged against the men restraining him, angrier over the fact he was being used as leverage against Steve than over the fact he’d been shot.  “No!  Let me go!”  He was struck across the face with the butt of a rifle and collapsed heavily with a yelp.

“Don’t!”  Steve stepped forward but one of the guards grabbed his arm and another shoved a gun to his face.  They were kicking Clint where he’d fallen. 

“Stop!  For God’s sake, Dan, stop it!”  Bruce was barely hanging on, wildly shifting his gaze between Clint’s beaten form and Steve’s stalwart face and Tony’s unconscious body.  Then he growled and dropped his head to his hands and ripped his fingers through his hair.  He was panting loudly, bent over in pain and pent-up frustration, sweat dripping from his face again.  The men hurting Clint abandoned their task, and every gun in the room swung to Banner.

“Bruce,” Steve said, desperate to hold this together for all their sakes.  “Please don’t.” 

Bruce looked at him and _listened_ , eyes wide and scared, his breath hissing through clenched teeth.  His body was shaking and twisting and battling with itself.  This was a nightmare.  _Let the Hulk loose.  Let the Hulk end this._   The inclination to do that was so damn strong.  The Hulk would destroy this place and put a stop to Lahey’s plans like nothing else was capable of doing.  But he couldn’t.  And if Tony and Clint were killed while the Hulk was unleashing his wrath, Bruce would never be able to forgive himself. 

Two lives were worth one.  Right?  Steve wasn’t a scientist or a genius, but he knew a hell of a lot about lying down on the wire so other men could live.  And he was damn sure two lives were worth more than one.

Steve looked into Bruce’s eyes again and tried to draw the man back out of the monster.  He needed Banner to hold onto his mind, to maintain his smarts and wits, and do what Lahey wanted.  Figure out the solution to the problem so that Bruce could aid this bastard in doing who knew what to him.  It was probably his only chance of surviving this… experiment.  _What the hell am I doing?_   _No choice.  No other way._

There was no way Steve was going to let anyone die when he could stop it.

He set his jaw and lifted his chin in defiance, his hands balled to fists at his side and every muscle in his body tight and ready.  “Leave them alone,” he ordered firmly, looking Lahey directly in the eye.  “I’ll do whatever you want.  But if you so much as touch either of them again, this is over.”  He didn’t say what would happen, and he didn’t make idle threats.  He hoped Lahey realized that.

Lahey couldn’t contain his joy, a relieved, ecstatic smile curling his lips.  It was more than disturbing.  It was downright _terrifying_.  “As long as you cooperate, I won’t.”

“Fine.”

“Bruce?”

Banner looked like he was going to be sick.  He closed his eyes in defeat.  “Yes.”

“Take him,” Lahey ordered the remainder of his men.  Clint was yelling, but nobody paid him any heed.  More than half the soldiers swarmed Captain America.  It took all of Steve’s will to remain pliant and submissive as his arms were grabbed and wrenched behind his back.  It would be a simple matter, really nothing at all, to toss these bastards across the room and free himself.  Just to dig his boots into the floor and prevent them from taking him.  He could fight them all single-handedly if he had to.  Desperation drove his panicked mind to rapidly run through the options, judging the outcomes of this attack or the consequences of that strike, but there was no move he could make that would stop either Clint or Tony or both from being killed.  His frustration mounted as he was pushed and dragged toward that chamber.

He met Bruce’s eyes.  The Hulk was completely gone, trapped again and sobered by the weight of the burden on Banner’s unwilling shoulders.  Caged and helpless.  Bruce could hardly stand to look at him.  He was bent and suffering with grief and guilt and utterly coated in Tony’s blood.  They both were.  “I’m so sorry, Steve,” he hoarsely mumbled, like this was his last chance to make amends.  Hopefully it wouldn’t be.  _Please_ _don’t let it be._

Steve offered a faint smile.  “It’s not your fault, Bruce.”  He had no chance to say or do anything else – he wanted to ask Bruce to make sure he got it _right_ – before the men yanked him away.  The doors to the interior of the lab swished open to reveal some sort of small clean room.  He was pushed inside and through another set of doors and into the chamber, where assistants were donning protective gear.  His eyes widened.  When he really started to process and understand what was about to happen, it was devastating.  Things flashed through his mind.  Doctor Erskine’s kind, compassionate face.  Peggy’s worried eyes.  Howard’s cool confidence.  The scientists and doctors and military men and government officials watching as he walked slowly to the smooth capsule that would transform him into a super soldier.  It had been frightening, but more than that, it had been exciting and empowering with the best intentions driving it.  He’d never been treated like anything but a person capable of making the choice.  And he’d made his choice without a bit of doubt.  He’d wanted it.

This was depraved and evil and he was nothing more than a specimen.  And he wanted to _run_.  His body moved without the consent of his mind, driven by panic and self-preservation.

“Don’t struggle,” Lahey ordered from outside the chamber.  Steve stopped fighting, even as his heart pounded and his breath locked in his chest and his skin crawled with icy nervousness.  “Their lives are depending on you.”

Their lives.  Tony and Clint.  He couldn’t forget.  And he couldn’t fight.  _Don’t struggle._

The lab assistants were preparing the table that awaited his helpless body, the restraints that would hold him down and the tools that would inflict whatever horrors they wanted.  Steve was still trying his absolute hardest to stay in control, to not to be afraid.  But this time his hardest wasn’t good enough.

Not nearly.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Just a little warning that this chapter probably butts up against a higher rating for disturbing imagery. Read at your own discretion. Thanks!

It hadn’t taken long at all for Clint and Steve to become good friends.  Clint had been in a bit of a dark place when Steve had joined SHIELD.  After the Chitauri invasion, he’d been lost.  Loki had taken his mind hostage.  Having a deranged Norse god playing around in his thoughts, forcing his body to be an unwilling instrument for evil, violating his most personal secrets…  It had screwed him up badly.  The rage and shame and grief had been unbearable.  He wasn’t used to dealing with his emotions, let alone trauma on such a grand and devastating scale.  As an assassin and a SHIELD agent, he’d learned to compartmentalize things ages ago, to distance himself from what he thought and felt to get the job done.  That was what he’d been trained to do.  With the Battle of New York behind him, SHIELD had assigned him a psychiatrist to help him come to terms with what he had done and what had been done to him.  The order had come down from Fury himself, and it had pissed Clint off something fierce.  Clint had outright ignored it because the _last_ thing he’d wanted to do was “share” his feelings with a shrink.  He couldn’t control how he felt, let alone understand it, and they wanted him to let all that fury and hatred out?  One minute he was the perpetrator, the enemy, a monster himself who’d killed fellow agents and massacred innocents and threatened the safety of the world…  And the next he was a victim, helpless and hurt and brutalized by someone else’s cruel whims.  It was impossible to reconcile that, to determine where he had ended during all of fighting and plotting and murdering and where Loki had begun.

A few days into Steve joining SHIELD at Fury’s request, he’d been assigned to help Clint and the STRIKE Team bring down a hostile nest of terrorists in Afghanistan.  Clint had been throwing himself whole-heartedly into his work because that had been the only way he could function, the only way he could survive.  He’d been running himself ragged, exhausting himself, moving faster and driving harder and pushing and _pushing_.  He’d pushed everyone away, even Natasha, too tormented and tortured to tolerate anyone’s intrusion into his self-imposed exile.  Needless to say he’d been unhappy at having Captain America butt his nose into his mission.  He’d been willing enough to follow Rogers’ orders during the Battle of New York.  He’d been hell-bent on stopping Loki and even more determined to redeem himself when he was honest enough with himself to admit it.  But having Rogers on this mission felt like Fury was babysitting him, like the Director had _known_ Clint had been falling apart and needed oversight.  And he had needed it.  The mission had gone south, and in the midst of the firefight he’d completely lost it.  In a blind rage, he’d lashed out at the terrorists, killing when he should have been capturing, utterly failing to lead his team.  The blood lust hadn’t even satiated his pain or desire for vengeance.  The STRIKE Team had tried to talk him down, but he hadn’t listened, too far gone and determined to pull every goddamn monster of out those holes in the desert and _end_ them like he himself deserved to be ended.  Uprooting and exterminating evil.  He’d been hurt, shot, but even that hadn’t pierced the red, murderous haze in his head.

But Steve had.  Steve had stopped him, forced him to lower his bow, forced him to stand down.  Steve hadn’t let Clint fight him, his voice level and his eyes calm and his grip firm but not painful.  And later, when he’d woken up in the infirmary back aboard the helicarrier, Steve had been there, dirty and hurt himself but seemingly untouched by the whole experience.  Clint had expected a stern dressing-down from a commanding officer.  He’d expected anger and disappointment from Captain America, the world’s finest, steadiest soldier and the best hero.  He’d gotten none of that.  _“You know what separates good men from bad men? It’s what we do with our anger,”_ Steve had softly said, _“and what we do with our pain.”_   A strong hand had grabbed his knee through the coarse blanket.  _“You don’t have to go it alone.”_   A sincere smile.  _“Somebody’s always been there to tell me that when I needed to hear it.”_

That was it.  No judgment.  No derision or doubt or pity.  No fake compassion or awkward silence or placating solace.  Just a quiet reminder that there was life outside the cell of his own depression.  Just a promise.  It didn’t matter that Rogers was at least five years his junior, a man out of time and out of place, someone who knew absolutely nothing about him.  In fact, that had been almost a blessing.  Clint had no need to pretend to be okay with him.  Clint had no need to continue this farce that he was the same guy he had been before Loki had gotten into his head.  Steve being who he was had removed the pressure to act like everything was okay when it wasn’t, and that had somehow made everything better.

And after that, they’d worked together all the time.  It was as if Fury had realized there was this tentative connection between the two of them, that Clint needed Steve’s silent, unimposing sturdiness to get him through his pain, and that Steve needed Clint to be a friend to him in this strange, new world.  They were alike in personality: quiet, serious, deliberate, private, sometimes prone to overthinking the wrong things and not thinking other things through at all.  They operated the same way, anticipated the same twists and turns in combat.  As partners they were efficient and strong, Clint’s ruthlessness tempered by Steve’s nobility.  Steve brought out the best in Clint and made fighting back the darkness upon which Loki had prayed that much easier.  And everybody thought Steve was doing such an admirable job of fitting into the future, but he didn’t always, and Clint was there to silently stand by him when the grief got too strong.  They even started to do _normal_ things together on the rare occasions they were not on a mission.  Sharing a beer over dinner.  Running.  Challenging each other on the shooting range or in the gym.  Watching baseball or football or whatever movie they were in the mood for.  Steve lived in DC and Clint crashed wherever he happened to be after returning from the latest op, but they always managed to find each other.  They fell into each other, fit together in ways that suited them both, and for the first time in a long time, Clint had someone on whom he depended.  A true friend.  Natasha had teased him over it, jokingly remarking that it was almost like Clint had adopted Captain America as a surrogate little brother.  Clint had told her to shut up, but inside he’d felt ridiculously proud of it and _good_ about it.  He wasn’t used to feeling good about anything.

So needless to say, it was difficult for him to stay still and not fight and helplessly _watch_ as Steve was being pulled away.  As Steve was being manhandled and dragged at gunpoint inside that chamber.  As Steve was being forced to submit because Clint was being held as a hostage and used as leverage.  As Steve faced being strapped to a table and subjected to who knew what as part of some sort of nightmarish experiment.

This was wrong.  He needed to stop this.  He needed to do something.  _Do something!_   He struggled up to his feet, but he couldn’t go any further.  “Easy there,” one of the men holding him ordered coldly.  Clint stiffened, breathing sharply through his nose, arching his back as the muzzle of one of the rifles was jabbed into it.  “Stay cool.”

Clint gritted his teeth until his jaw ached from the pressure.  Blood slipped down his arm and flank from his shoulder, and his ribs ached fiercely where he’d been kicked, but he didn’t let that deter him.  “Doctor Banner,” he called.  Ahead Bruce was breathing shallowly, shaking, his hands limp and loose at his side.  Defeated.  “Don’t do this.”  His harsh demand drew Banner’s attention, but the brown eyes that turned to him were dead and devoid of rage.  The Hulk was gone from his gaze.  Clint struggled to keep his own anger in check.  “Please don’t.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Bruce answered, like that somehow made this okay.  Like that was reason enough to stop fighting.

In Clint’s opinion, there was _never_ a good enough reason to stop fighting.  Maybe he was naïve and overly stubborn for thinking that, but it wasn’t in his nature to accept limitations or losses.  Steve had taught him something about standing up and doing the right thing, even when the odds were bleak.  “You think they’re gonna let any of us go?” Clint raged.  He knew how terrorists operated, how guns-for-hire and mercenaries murdered their witnesses and opted for maximum casualties rather than face incarceration.  “You think doing this is going to save Stark or save me?  It won’t, doc.  So don’t do it.”  The gun jabbed harder in his back.  The thug by Stark pressed his pistol deeper into the unconscious man’s forehead.  Clint breathed harshly through clenched teeth.  In the chamber behind them, he caught glimpses of Steve as the soldiers and technicians pushed him beside that table.  He planted his hands upon it, clearly yearning to push back, hesitating to comply even with the guns at his back and the guns on his friends.  He looked up, terror bright in blue eyes, sweat coating his face.  Clint had never seen Steve afraid.  Not like this.  Their gazes locked again, but that was all Clint could see.  Fear. 

Clint turned to look back at Banner.  “Please,” he whispered.  There was no reason to hide anything now.  No reason not to beg.  “He’s my friend.”

No one cared.  “Strip!” hollered one of the soldiers in the chamber.  The man looked frightened as well, frightened by the idea of facing Captain America and trying to force him into doing what they wanted.  He looked downright scared shitless.  Clint was more than slightly pleased at that.  When Steve didn’t move, the soldier rammed the butt of his gun into Steve’s lower back.  Steve hardly grimaced.  “I said strip!  Now!”

“Go,” snarled one of the men behind Clint.  Clint refused, making his body as unbendable as a board and as unmovable as a wall.  It didn’t matter.  While they couldn’t make Steve do anything, Clint was unfortunately more pliable.  _“Walk.”_

They grabbed his arms and shoved him up to the console surrounding the booth.  Clint glared icily at Lahey, who’d been stony and impassive since Steve had acquiesced to his demands.  Confident, maybe for Bruce’s sake but probably for his own.  The guy was a certifiable monster, a mad scientist in the flesh.  “You son of a bitch,” Clint snarled.  “You’ll rot in hell for this.”

Lahey ignored him.  “I said not to struggle, Captain,” he called through the intercom to the chamber.  Steve still stood even as they marched Clint as close as possible to the huge glass windows surrounding the chamber.  They wanted Steve to have a perfect view of what he stood to lose if he didn’t cooperate.  That made Clint’s heart pound even harder, his blood veritably boiling in ire, as he was made to stand with a gun at his temple and another at his back.  Lahey looked between his hostage and his test subject.  “Now take your clothes off.”

The muscles of Steve’s face shifted as he worked his teeth together in frustration.  Then he stood straighter and reached for the zipper of his uniform.  Everybody watched as he followed Lahey’s orders, slipping his combat boots off his feet and his clothes off his body.  It was humiliating and degrading.  After a long, silent moment, Steve was clad only in his boxers, his chest heaving in ragged, anxious breaths.  “Now what?” he tightly demanded.

“Up on the table,” Lahey ordered.  He didn’t wait to see if Steve complied, moving toward the computer terminals situated around the console.  His fingers flew across one of the keyboards, another of his assistants joining him at a different monitor and aiding in preparing their equipment.  Clint watched as Steve hesitated again, as that raw fear darted across eyes that were staring at the table like it was worse than any villain, any monster, any terrorist hidden in any foxhole they’d ever faced.  It was.  How the hell had it come to this?  It had all happened so fast, and Clint was helpless to stop it.  They were all _helpless_.

Inside the chamber, the guards got anxious and impatient.  One of them lifted his arms to ram Steve with his rifle again, but Captain America smoothly whirled around and caught the gun in his hand.  He didn’t take it, didn’t disarm the soldier, but the man stepped back, alarmed and horrified.  The other guards came closer, their weapons threatening.  Steve shoved the weapon back into the thug’s chest, and the man stumbled away and nearly fell.  He was lucky he hadn’t been thrown across the room.  “Back off,” he snapped.

Lahey glanced up from his work, but he didn’t need to say anything or threaten Clint or Tony any further.  Steve glanced to Clint, furious and afraid, not begging him for help but desperate for it nonetheless.  Clint swallowed through a dry, tight throat.  _I’m sorry._   The words rushed about his addled mind, burning and scorching like lightning scraping his useless thoughts.  _I’m sorry.  Don’t do this.  Somebody stop it.  Fight, Steve.  Don’t let them do this to you.  Fight!_

Steve grabbed the edge of the table and pulled himself up onto it.  Clint closed his eyes in defeat, trembling in hardly restrained emotion.  He couldn’t make himself watch as the soldiers and lab assistants swarmed their test subject and grabbed Captain America’s arms and legs and held him down.  The restraints were fastened across Steve’s ankles and wrists.  Straps were buckled over his chest and abdomen and thighs, cutting into his skin.  He could break them if he tried.  If he wanted.  _Break them!_   “What are you going to do to him?”  Clint’s lips moved around the soft words.  He hadn’t thought to ask.  It was akin to accepting that this was going to happen, that it was inevitable and beyond his control.

Lahey ignored him.  “Bruce,” he beckoned.  When Banner didn’t move closer, Lahey got frustrated.  “Come here.  Now.  Enough of this.  I’m through with asking.”

Another of the men grabbed Bruce by the arm, emboldened by how completely they controlled the Avengers, and shoved him next to Lahey.  Clint went taut, glancing at Banner and almost praying that Bruce would lose control and unleash the Hulk and _destroy_ these men.  But he didn’t.  He was absolutely wrecked, shocked and beaten down.  There was a flurry of activity inside the chamber.  The assistants were measuring Steve’s vital signs, logging their data like good little scientists.  Clint wanted to scream.  One came with a few needles, swabbing Steve’s right bicep before injecting him.  Steve’s hands furled into fists in the cuffs and then jerked loose again.  Clint worried the reaction was due to pain for a second, but he realized Steve was just trying to stay still and restrain his strength.  So much restraint.  “What is that?” Clint demanded of Lahey.  “What was in those needles?”

Lahey ignored him again.  Like he was nothing.  Like Steve was nothing.  Like Tony was nothing.  But Bruce he respected.  Bruce he _needed_.  “Here’s the data on the infusion,” he quietly said as he leaned over Bruce’s shoulder, and with a few taps of the keyboard, a database of files appeared on one of the monitors.  Bruce reluctantly came closer.  He gathered up the remains of his equanimity and narrowed his eyes as he looked at what Lahey was showing him.  “Now autopsy confirmed 82% of the drug was successfully drawn through the lipid bilayer, but cell death occurred from cytotoxicity before it was able to interact with the DNA.”

“I thought you said the infusion wasn’t the problem,” Bruce angrily said.

“It’s not.”

“How can it not be?  It _kills_ living tissue.  It’s poison!”

“It’s not the problem,” Lahey retorted angrily, obviously affronted with the mere idea that his drug was flawed.  “Death isn’t instantaneous.  After the infusion, subjects have survived anywhere from five to fifteen minutes.”  Bruce blanched, his wide eyes glancing to Steve as though he was realizing the enormity of what was about to happen.  The enormity and the goddamn _finality_.  “That leads me to believe I’m introducing the Gamma exposure too late in the process, that I need to induce mutation earlier but I’m not sure when or how much to use.”

Bruce shook his head as he scrolled through the records.  “Jesus, Dan,” he whispered.  “How many people died for this?”

Lahey didn’t answer that.  He was thinking aloud, treating Bruce like a partner in his experiment when the other man was anything but.  “And getting the Gamma intensity wrong isn’t helping.  But he’s got the super soldier serum on his side, right.  And that should confer some defense against necrosis.  Or at least postpone it.  And against radiation sickness.  Right?”  Bruce didn’t answer.  Lahey got frustrated, his eyes flashing in anger and mounting desperation.  “Right, Bruce?” he hotly prodded.

“I don’t know,” Bruce snapped.  The monitors mounted at the top of the chambers winked to life.  Clint winced as they began to display Steve’s vital signs.  Blood pressure and respiration and heart rates.  Bruce grimaced.  “I don’t know!”

“It has to,” Lahey returned.  He started furiously typing at the computer.  “It has to.  Erskine’s notes said his serum creates a level of cellular defense and regeneration that far surpasses a normal human’s.  That’ll mitigate the cytotoxic effects long enough for the Gamma to do its job.” 

“You wanted a pure sample.  He’s just as impure as I am.  You have no idea how your drug is going to interact with the super soldier serum,” Bruce argued, shaking his head.  “There’s no way to even predict it.  _No way._   This isn’t good science, and you know it.”

Appealing to Lahey’s humanity had failed.  Threatening him had failed.  Bruce was trying now to reach him through the only thing that seemed to matter to him.  “I don’t have any other choice.  My drug kills the brain before it can infuse with DNA.”

“He’s a human being, not some specimen you can randomly experiment on!” Clint shouted.  “You sick bastard!  Let him go!”

“Easy, Clint,” Steve calmly ordered from inside the chamber.  He couldn’t see them anymore, tied to the table with his gaze locked to the ceiling.  Clint fumed, hot tears of frustration and pain burning in his eyes.  He didn’t know how Steve could hold himself together in the face of what was before him.  How Steve could be so damn strong and self-sacrificing.

And Lahey was thundering on like a madman.  “Look at the data, Bruce!” he roared.  “It’s there.  Infusion rates and Gamma amounts and durations and time until catastrophic cell death.  It’s all there!  Figure out what I’m doing wrong!”  Bruce still hesitated, his face scrunched in a furious, helpless frown.  “Figure it out,” Lahey hissed, pointing his gun at Bruce.  His hand was shaking and his eyes glowed bright with feverish insanity.

Bruce’s anger emerged again.  Clint was almost glad to see it.  Anger meant a struggle.  “I don’t know how.  You’re asking me to glance over mountains of data and solve a problem I don’t know anything about.  I need time.  Be reasonable, for Christ’s sake!”

Lahey wasn’t deterred by Bruce’s excuses.  “I know how smart you are.”  Bruce was shocked and hurt at that, like all of this craziness was punishment for his intelligence.  He glanced at Clint like he wanted the SHIELD agent to argue on his behalf, but there was nothing to say.  Clint jerked and the men grasped him tighter and the guns dug harder into him again.  His eyes turned to the chamber, where Steve waited, breathing quickly in barely controlled panic, bound to that table and helpless.

Then Lahey completely lost his patience.  “Prep him,” he commanded his lab assistants in the chamber.  Everything smooth and calm and controlled about him had been eroding since he’d shot Stark, and now it was totally worn away, leaving behind only hysteria and a frenzied rush to see his dream fulfilled.  He turned back to Bruce and shoved the gun in his face.  “ _Figure it out!_ ”

“Then leave me alone and let me think!” Bruce shouted back.  He sat at the console and started looking over the data, visibly fighting to concentrate.  The next few minutes dragged away, and they felt as if they were an endless eternity of tension and fear.  Clint stood stiffly, his shoulder throbbing relentlessly, his head pounding and his vision swimming with dizziness.  His flesh crawled as he waited and _waited_.  Mindlessly his fingers worked, twisting against the zip tie until his skin was cut and bloodied.  He’d been trying constantly since they’d bound him to free himself, but it was impossible.  Still he kept trying, even if his fingers were numb from constricted circulation and his wrists were cut raw.  It was the only thing left to him.  The only thing he could do to help, which was complete and utter bullshit, because there was _no_ escape.  No way to fight.  No way to stop this. 

Banner was trying to keep focused, but it was hard because the lab assistants in the chamber were readying equipment around Steve.  Clint had thought those wicked arms under the table would come out and encircle Steve, but that wasn’t the case.  A hydraulic hiss resounded as a platform raised the table a good three feet so that Steve was at the height of the assistants’ heads.  They ducked under the table and snapped the arms in position beneath it.  Clint couldn’t exactly see where, but he did see needles at the end of each.  He nearly choked on his breath as he watched the technicians place an apparatus at the head of the bed.  Steve shifted uncomfortably, fearfully, pulling against the restraints as two long needles, each more than six inches of metal ending in a razor-sharp, thick point, were extended from the machine.  Extended and moved closer and closer to each of Steve’s temples.  “No,” Clint whispered.  He turned murderous eyes toward Lahey.  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”  Steve’s ragged cry echoed through the lab.  Clint could barely stand to watch as those needles were driven into Steve’s skull.  “What are you going to do to him?  Answer me, damn it!”

“I’m expanding his mind,” Lahey answered, at long last acknowledging Clint.  “The infusion goes directly into the cerebral spinal fluid.  Normally the anesthetic would make this less painful.”  Steve screamed again.  Clint looked away, torn by overwhelming anger and disgust and fear.  “Hurry, Bruce.  With his metabolism, the clock is ticking even faster.”

Bruce didn’t answer, ignoring the screaming, the pressure, the guns at his back and pointed at Clint and Tony.  Everything depended on him now, on his agile mind digesting this data at record speed and deducing the right answer.  _Steve’s life depended on him_.  If he couldn’t determine how to fix the Gamma exposure, Steve would most certainly die.  His brown eyes flicked over the arrays of data, reading and analyzing and thinking faster than seemed possible.  Clint didn’t consider himself stupid in the least bit; he knew he was more than capable in almost any situation, gifted with steady hands and tactical smarts and common sense.  But what Bruce was doing – what Bruce _needed_ to do – was so far beyond him that he was small and weak and completely insignificant in comparison. 

Steve’s howl drew his attention back to the horror unfolding before him.  On the monitors above them the soldier’s vitals lurched wildly, his heart and respiration rates increasing dramatically and his blood pressure skyrocketing.  Steve’s hands were balled into crushing fists, his back arching off the table to reveal nearly a dozen thick needles sticking into his spine.  _Oh,_ _God._   Clint felt his stomach lurch in misery.  “Captain, stay still,” Lahey ordered.  The lab techs grabbed Steve’s writhing form and tried to pull him flat and guide him back down, but he was too strong.  “Stay still.  Struggling will make it hurt more.”

Steve gave a low, hoarse groan.  He was shaking with pain and effort, the effort required to go against what was surely every bit of self-preservation and relax.  He sank back to the table, gasping and shivering and fighting to stay limp.  Clint couldn’t see his face.

Lahey was becoming increasingly anxious.  “Well, Bruce?”

“Give me a goddamn minute!” Banner snapped.  Now he had another program open on the computer monitor, some sort of statistical package that he was using to do an analysis.  From his vantage, Clint couldn’t read the results, and he sincerely doubted he could interpret them anyway.  Sweat lined Banner’s forehead, his eyes narrowed as he deftly moved his fingers across the keyboard.  He shook his head.  “I don’t know…  Maybe…”  He glanced at Lahey.  “This is fundamentally flawed.  If your data is right, your drug is causing too much damage–”

“No.”

“The DNA is denaturing before there’s even a chance to–”

“Like I said, the radiation is coming too late.”

“The radiation is only going to make it worse unless you properly stabilize the reaction,” Bruce argued.  “You can’t pour more fuel onto a fire and expect anything other than more fire!”

“So I _am_ using too much Gamma,” Lahey surmised.  Clint didn’t know a damn thing about biochemistry but even he figured out that was not what Bruce had said.  “And you’ve corrected that?”

Bruce looked flabbergasted, like he couldn’t believe someone he’d once considered a genius in his own right could be so ignorant, so blinded to his own mistakes and faults.  He turned his shocked gaze from Lahey to the computer monitor.  There were some graphs on it, graphs Clint didn’t understand, but it looked like an answer to Lahey’s question.  He didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.  He settled on terrified.  “I don’t know,” Bruce said.  “In the end it’s the same amount of exposure but in a different sequence.  More in the beginning and less at the end.  I have no idea if this will work.”

Lahey could hardly contain his excitement.  “Only one way to find out.”  He pulled Bruce away from the keyboard.  He was rapidly firing orders at his assistants, long words and jargon that Clint couldn’t understand filling the air, and then he looked into the chamber as the techs furiously worked at the computers.  “Let’s do this.”

“No!” Clint cried.  His composure utterly snapped, and he couldn’t stand to be still one more second.  “No!  You goddamn son of a bitch!  He just said he didn’t know if it would work!”

“Infusion in thirty seconds,” Lahey announced, watching his monitors with a calm mask that did nothing to hide the visceral tinge of excitement dancing in his eyes.  He clasped a friendly hand on Bruce’s shoulder, friendly like they were both in this _together_.  Like it was what they both wanted.  “I need you to adjust things as we go, okay?”  Bruce didn’t answer.  His eyes were closed.  He was shaking.  “Keep the monster in the cage.  You need to think now.  Okay?  You with me, Bruce?”

“Bruce, no!”  Clint yanked away from the grips of the guards and flung himself toward Banner.  “Don’t do it!  No!”

“Get him out of here,” Lahey ordered, not even looking toward Clint as he raged.  “Put him and Stark in the annex.”

And that was it.  He wasn’t useful anymore.  There was no need for leverage, for violent persuasion.  Lahey had gotten exactly what he wanted and he was getting rid of extraneous baggage.  The soldiers dragged Clint away, Clint who couldn’t stop himself from kicking and struggling and landing his boot into the midriff of one man and his forehead into the nose of another.  However, none of it mattered now.  They pulled him away from the console, away from Bruce, away from Steve.  A rifle slammed into his face and blood filled his mouth as his teeth gnashed his cheek.  He was down on the cold tiles of the floor, being kicked and yanked and carried away.  Clint fought with everything he had left, panic and rage flooding him until he couldn’t think anymore, but it was no use.

The soldiers moved him to one of the rooms adjacent to the main lab and opened the door.  It was a smaller lab filled with idle equipment.  They threw him inside.  He landed roughly on his shot shoulder and was unable to stifle the yelp that blew past his lips with the air that rushed from his lungs.  With his arms so tightly bound, Clint struggled to roll over from his side to relieve the pressure on the wound.  He barely got his knees beneath him, bracing his heated forehead against the cold floor for a moment.  Then more men came, carrying Stark’s limp, bloody body.  They set him down beside Clint and slammed the door shut and locked it.

“No,” Clint groaned.  The room was spinning and his ears were ringing and blood was pounding in his head.  But even the stampede of his pulse wasn’t loud enough to blot out the sound of Steve screaming.  “God.  Oh, God.”  He struggled upward, swallowing the burn of bile in his throat, and shuffled on his knees over to the door.  Light bled through the crack between the bottom of the door and floor, bright illumination that hurt his eyes.  He could hear muffled words and the sound of a machine whirring and powering up.  “Let me out of here!  Let me out!”

Nobody did.  Nobody even answered.  He rammed his unhurt shoulder to the door, but it wouldn’t budge.  He had to do something.  It was terribly difficult to think with Steve’s hoarse cries echoing through the lab, but he forced himself to ignore them, to be strong and not picture the hell through which his friend was going.  Thoughts tumbled about his head, wild and frantic, and he quickly took stock of his surroundings.  The long room was loaded with supplies.  Equipment and tools and computers covered the two lengthy lab benches attached to each wall.  Obviously it served as an auxiliary work area.  There had to be something here he could use to free himself.  He’d been in situations like this, bound and trussed and trapped by the enemy.  He’d gotten himself out before.  He could do it now.

Clint slumped down and worked his hands under him.  Having long arms and a shorter stature proved useful on occasion, and he wriggled and twisted until his hands were down by his boots.  It was hard given how tightly his wrists were bound and his wounded shoulder, but he didn’t let the discomfort slow him down.  With a cry of pain, he slid his arms under and over his boots and got them to his front.  Then he stood and raced to the work benches.  He yanked out drawers, messily digging through laboratory paraphernalia, searching for anything that could cut the zip tie.  “Come on, come on, _come on!_ ”

In the matter of few frenzied seconds, he’d checked the entirety of both benches.  There was nothing.  No scissors or box cutter or razor or _anything_ with a sharp edge that he could use.  There also wasn’t a phone and all of the computers were locked with either a finger print scanner or by password, so he had no way to call for help.  “God damn it,” he moaned, sweat stinging his eyes as he stood in the center of the room and looked around once more, praying he’d missed something.  Then he listened and listened hard.  He couldn’t hear Steve anymore.  He couldn’t hear _anything_.  “God damn it!”

Clint ran back to the door in two huge strides, stepping over Stark’s unconscious form and pressing his ear to the gray surface.  It was silent.  He grabbed the knob and twisted it in his blood-slicked fingers, but it was as secured as he’d feared.  His balance was far better with his arms in front of him, and he kicked the door as mightily as he could.  It didn’t give.  Frustration clenched his gut.  _Somebody help me!_   He looked around, up to the ceiling, down through the gap between the door and the floor, scanning the stuff atop the benches _again_.  There had to be some way out.  He wasn’t going to give up!

Suddenly Steve screamed even louder than before.  The horrific sound broke Clint’s tenuous hold on his emotions, and he threw himself into the door with reckless abandon, swearing and yelling and spitting fire.  More yelling resounded outside.  He couldn’t make out the words.  Exhausted and nearly defeated, he collapsed to the door.  “Somebody help me…”

“…ell’s goin’ on?”

The strained murmur cut through Clint’s despair.  He ripped around and crawled over to Stark.  The inventor’s face was deathly gray and sallow.  Blood was drying on his lips and chin.  The soldiers had taken away the oxygen mask, and he wasn’t breathing very well.  Clint winced as he glanced at the blood soaked bandage over Stark’s middle, praying that the rough handling hadn’t torn open any of Bruce’s stitches inside or out.  “Stark,” he gasped, touching his fingers to the pulse point on Tony’s wrist.  His heart rate was decent enough.  “Tony, can you hear me?  It’s Barton.  You with me?”

“No.”  Tony winced and shifted.  “Ow.”

“We’re in trouble,” Clint explained.  “We need to get out of here.”  The monumental stupidity of that statement struck him and left him even more desperate.  Stark was half dead – what the hell could he do?  “You have a phone?  Anything?  Please tell me you have something…”  He shoved shaking fingers into Tony’s jeans pockets, but there was nothing, not even the keys to his car.  His blazer had been left in a blood-soaked mess on the floor outside, so whatever might have been in that was unreachable.  Stark lived and breathed technology and gadgets and he had _nothing_ on him that Clint could use.  Another deep and ragged scream echoed through the lab.  Clint winced and battled tears.  “Christ, they’re killing him…”

Stark suddenly flung out his right arm, nearly knocking Clint over in surprise.  “… incoming…” he muttered.  His half-lidded eyes blinked as he put all of his effort into both staying awake and holding his palm out toward the sealed door.  Clint turned and looked at the door, half expecting to see a smoldering hole or _something_ in the smooth metal.  However, there was nothing, even after a moment of anxious waiting.  Clint grimaced in confusion, shaking his head.  Stark was delirious as all hell.  Maybe he thought he was wearing his suit?  Tony licked his lips and shrugged slightly.  “Takes a while.  Give it a minute.”

“What the hell are you–”

An explosion suddenly rocked the lab outside.  It was coming from the opposite side of the chamber, by the doors they’d used to enter.  Clint flinched, instinctively throwing himself over Stark’s body.  Shock and fear raced over him, his mind empty in alarm and beyond even considering what was happening outside.  There were more screams, screams that weren’t Steve’s, and yelling and guns firing.  And then the door blew open.

“Holy shit,” Clint breathed.

Iron Man hovered in the door frame in all of its red and gold glory.  The repulsors in its palms and boots were ignited, keeping the gleaming suit of armor aloft.  Clint watched in utter stupefaction, wondering who the hell was piloting it.  Then the armor flew apart in a graceful, coordinated show, and he realized Iron Man was flying itself.

Tony balled his hand into fist and with an agonized cry yanked it back toward him.  And the pieces of the suit raced toward Clint.  The archer had no time to move or think or even _prepare_ as the chest plate slammed onto his back and unfurled around his body.  He felt heat along his wrists and saw the red light of a confined laser slice the zip tie and suddenly he was free.  He hardly had time to even realize that as the gauntlets and vambraces enclosed his hands and arms, the armor smoothly expanding up and down his body.  The boots and leg pieces transformed perfectly midflight to bend around his thighs, calves, and feet where he crouched.  And then the helmet slid over his head and the face plate came down and he was inside.

The HUD display was beautifully alight before his stunned eyes, crystal clear and vibrant.  “What the hell?” he whispered.

“Agent Barton.”  The calm British accent of Stark’s AI filled the helmet.  “Shall I put you in contact with SHIELD?”  Clint’s shock was quickly turning to relief and exhilaration and he drew a deep breath, his eyes quickly devouring the glowing images before him.  Some of them he didn’t understand, but the AI had gone ahead and was working on putting a call into SHIELD without his approval.  “One moment, sir.  There is no reception this far underground so I need to access the Institute’s wireless network.”

On the screen, SHIELD’s logo appeared in the lower right.  It was almost immediately replaced with Maria Hill’s stoic face.  “Barton?  What the hell are you doing in Stark’s suit?”

“No time to explain,” he returned.  “Banner’s friend is insane.  He’s experimenting on the Cap.  Stark’s been shot.  We need immediate med-evac and backup!”

Hill didn’t look fazed.  She never did.  She nodded curtly.  “I’m sending the STRIKE Team to you.”

Clint stood.  The joints in Iron Man were powered, making the motion smooth and effortless.  The armor wasn’t heavy at all.  Tony had managed to prop himself up slightly.  “You break it, you buy it,” he mumbled wearily.  His eyes slipped shut and he slumped again.  “Go get ’em.”

Clint was out the door a breath later, slamming it shut behind him to protect Stark.  Smoke and flames greeted him as well as a barrage of bullets.  It took his beleaguered mind a moment to realize he didn’t need to worry about dodging the gunfire, the shots clanking uselessly against the plates of armor surrounding him.  Clint gasped happily, goddamn _gleefully_ , his relief nearly staggering as he raised his hand and power surged through the gauntlet and the repulsor fired.  One of the soldiers went down with a howl, struck in the chest.  “Whoa,” Clint murmured.  Despite everything, he had to admit that this was pretty awesome.  He whirled, firing both repulsors at the men shooting at him.  A soldier rammed him, but he hardly felt the blow and stayed on his feet.  Balling Iron Man’s gauntlet into a fist, he punched back into bastard’s face, sending him flying.  Another came at him, the one who’d shot him before, and tried to sweep his legs out from under him.  His foot smashed into Iron Man’s boot and broke.  He yowled as Clint kicked him aside and then stomped down and planted his boot against the man’s throat.  A single shot ended him.

The fight was fast and furious.  These thugs were no match for Iron Man.  It had been a stroke of good fortune for Lahey that Stark had been unconscious all this time; had he summoned his armor to him minutes ago, _none_ of this would have happened.  As it stood, Clint let his rage rush over him, and with a vengeance he tore through the mercenaries who’d hurt them.  And a moment later, when it was finished, black-clad bodies lay strewn through the destroyed work area, and equipment lay burning and smoldering.

Alarms were wailing.  The whirring noise was thunderous.  Clint turned, Iron Man’s eyes glowing menacingly in the smoke and flickering yellow light, and stalked to the console.  If Lahey noticed the carnage behind him, it wasn’t obvious.  His eyes were shifting quickly between the screens displaying Steve’s erratic vitals and the monitors before him.  Bruce was sitting beside him, his face twisted into a perpetual grimace, his hands gripping the console hard enough that his knuckles were white.  “Shut it down,” Clint ordered, raising Iron Man’s palm repulsor and pointing it at Lahey.  “Shut it down!”

“I can’t,” Lahey answered.  His face was bathed in sweat, his brown hair mussed, his eyes wild with hope and fear and a wish for his experiment to work in the face of mounting evidence that it wasn’t.  “I can’t!”

“Damn it,” Clint snarled, grabbing for the scientist and wrenching him away, _“shut it down!”_

Bruce turned.  Questions flashed in his eyes, but he didn’t ask them.  There was no time.  “He’s right,” he angrily announced.  “The computer’s locked.  The reactor needs to cycle through.”

Steve screamed in agony, and Clint finally could see what was happening.  Radiation was filling the chamber.  Yellow lights flashed warnings all around them.  The chamber was empty aside from Steve, and he was strapped still to the table.  He was convulsing violently, nearly shaking the entire apparatus apart with his unhinged and uncoordinated strength.  Blood dripped from the table to the floor, but Clint couldn’t see from where it was coming.  His left arm had broken free, and it was clenching and unclenching spastically, struggling mindlessly against unseen demons.  The alarms were coming from the computers monitoring his vitals.  Tachycardia.  Hyperventilation.  His blood pressure was dangerously high.  He was dying.

 _No!_   “Will the suit protect me?” Clint asked as he pointed the palm repulsor toward the glass windows of the chamber.  “Will it?”

“Yes, but I would not recommend that, sir,” Stark’s AI calmly advised.

“No, Clint!” Bruce hollered, standing and grabbing the archer’s armor-clad shoulder.  “Don’t!  You’ll flood the whole lab!”

Iron Man’s HUD was filled with radiation warnings, numbers and figures that Clint didn’t have the time or patience to understand beyond the crushing fact that exposure would be lethal.  He let loose a cry of frustration, of absolute fury, and rounded on Lahey.  “You son of a bitch!  _You son of a bitch!_ ”  One swipe of his arm sent the bastard flying back.  He collided with another work bench and slid across it before collapsing in heap to the floor, dazed and bleeding.  The lab techs cowering in the opposite corner of the room huddled together and screamed, afraid of Clint’s wrath as Iron Man glared at them.  _They should be.  They all should be._

But his rage paled in comparison to his fear and worry.  He looked back to Bruce.  “What do we do?” he asked breathlessly.

Bruce seemed sick and on the brink again.  Guilt twisted his face.  Guilt and pain.  “There isn’t anything we can do.”

“How long?”

“Two minutes,” Bruce answered.  His eyes were filled with frustrated tears.  “Another two minutes.”

Another two minutes was an eternity.  The Hulk would survive radiation exposure of this intensity.  Clint supposed, safe in the suit of armor, he would as well.  But not Lahey or any of the soldiers still living or the lab techs or Tony.  And there wasn’t enough time to get them all out to a safe distance.  They couldn’t risk all those lives for one, no matter how much they wanted to and no matter how much the evil in the room deserved to suffer.  So the two of them stood stiffly, watching in helpless horror as Steve suffered.  Steve wasn’t quite conscious anymore, seizing in the restraints.  He didn’t have the strength or oxygen left in his damaged body to scream.  His strained wheezing, every breath married with a moan, was somehow louder than the whirring of the reactor and the wailing of the alarms.  _Hold on,_ Clint implored, watching as Steve’s violent seizures began to still and then stop.  Watching as the jagged lines of his racing pulse smoothed and slow.  He saw where the blood was coming from now.  Steve coughed and it splattered from his lips.  It dribbled from his nose and ears.  _Hold on._   _Hold on!_

The monitors blared again with a new warning.  It was a sudden and devastating transition.  His heartbeat was unsteady and halting.  Slowing.  And a second later, he flat lined.  His heart had completely stopped.  He was in cardiac arrest.

“No!  Steve!  Don’t do this!”  Clint shook his head in wild desperation, his eyes glued to Steve’s body.  His chest wasn’t moving anymore.  He was deathly still.  “Steve!” he cried, reaching over the console and slamming a fist to the reinforced glass.  “ _Steve!_ ”

“Thirty seconds,” Bruce whispered.

“Steve, please,” Clint begged.  He bowed his head, unable to watch.  It was unbearable.  “ _Please…_ ” 

“I tried,” Bruce whispered.  “I thought maybe more Gamma would speed the reaction along before the drug became fatal… I thought that might be better than letting the drug kill him.  Maybe there would be a chance.”  Clint wasn’t sure if he was talking to him or simply talking for confession’s sake.  “But there was no way, no way.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t know.  I needed more time.  God, forgive me…  I tried…  I swear I did.”  His words died and he trembled.  Iron Man’s display was bombarding Clint with information, projecting survival rates given the number of rads of radiation the reactor was producing.  It had been a fatal exposure.  Why had Bruce used so much?  _Why?_   Clint had no answer.  No rationalization or justification.  It wasn’t Bruce’s fault.  He wanted to believe that.  But he couldn’t make himself say it.  There was _nothing_ to say.

The countdown finally reached zero, and the reactor powered down.  It took another few horrendously long seconds for the computer to release the locks on the chamber.  Clint raced to the doors, waiting impatiently for them to open.  Once they did, he charged through the clean room and inside.  “Get the restraints off!” Bruce shouted from outside.  Clint wasted no time in doing that, rushing to the table that Bruce was lowering down again with the exterior controls.  Clint swallowed thickly, not brave enough to look at the body before him, removing the cuffs from Steve’s feet as fast as he could.  He yanked the straps clear off the table.  The cuff around Steve’s right wrist had been bent and damaged by his struggling; thankfully with Iron Man’s increased strength the metal gave way with one mighty pull.  Then he gathered Steve’s limp body in his arms and carried him out.

Once outside of the chamber, he immediately dropped to his knees, cradling Steve against him.  There were things going on around him.  The chamber had sealed itself again.  There was the crack of gunfire down the hall.  Screaming and fighting and boots thundering on the floor.  Bruce racing to his side but not touching either of them.  Other alarms shrilly screaming about radiation exposure.  Words and frantic questions.  But none of it mattered.

Clint still tried not to look, not wanting to believe, but he had to.  And when he did, it was undeniable.  Steve’s blue eyes were half-lidded and unblinking and empty.  Blood, a deep, dark red, languidly dripped from his parted lips.  Everywhere his skin was splotchy and mottled by burst capillaries and internal damage.  His chest was still.  There was no breath, no heartbeat.  He was gone.  He had been dead long before Clint had reached him.

Clint choked on a sob, holding his friend tightly against him, lowering Iron Man’s helmet to Steve’s forehead.  His breath was so loud inside the suit, a fast-paced rush of quivering air against the dark confines of the helmet.  Suddenly this armor that had felt empowering, like goddamn salvation, was a claustrophobic hell that was suffocating him.  He needed to get it off.  He needed to do something.  Steve didn’t deserve to die like this.  The metal arms around him were too cold, too cruel.  He needed to take the suit off!

But he didn’t.  Everything was contaminated, and it was already too late.

Familiar voices reached through the vortex of meaningless sight and sound and sensation.  “Stark?  Stark!”  It was Natasha.  Where had she come from?  The mess of jagged thoughts in his head couldn’t come up with an explanation.  The rest of the STRIKE Team was behind her, guns raised and eyes hard.  They were securing the area.  He saw red hair and a black suit and blue eyes steeped in confusion and worry.  “Stark?”

“It’s me,” Clint sadly announced.  “Stark needs help.  He’s… uh…  Back there.”  His voice failed him.

Natasha was pale. Her eyes widened in horror.   “Oh my God.  We need the medical team here!  _Hurry!_ ”  She shook her head, holstering her weapon.  “Clint, what happened?  Rogers isn’t…”

“He’s dead,” Clint said roughly.  Tears bled from his eyes behind Iron Man’s mask.  Natasha made to reach for him, but he jerked away, taking Steve’s limp body with him.  “Don’t touch us!  Get back!”

Natasha whispered something in Russian, her eyes wide and frightened and then filled with disgusted fury.  But that was nothing compared to the roar from her left as Bruce at long last _lost it_.

The lab shook as the Hulk let go of his rage.  There was a dark shadow and a blur of green as the monster took a single, gigantic step toward where Lahey had fallen.  He screamed again, deep and violent, and reached down and grabbed Lahey by the throat.  Natasha’s eyes were mired in fear as the SHIELD agents immediately trained their guns on Banner.  “Stand down!” she shouted.  The Hulk was unhinged, driven by emotion, dragging Lahey off the floor and throwing him into the wall.  A bone-crunching thud resounded.  “Doctor Banner!  Stop!  _Stand down!_ ”

Clint watched the nightmare continuing before him, dazed and dead and uncaring.  He stopped fighting and let the pain wash over him.  Pain from his damaged ribs and shot shoulder.  Pain from his aching heart, so heavy and miserable in his chest.  There was fighting and screaming and guns firing.  He was gone from it.  He looked down at Steve’s still, gray face.  He reached metal fingers towards his eyelids to pull them down.

Steve’s hand snapped up and grabbed his wrist.  Clint couldn’t help himself.  He screamed.

The dead body in his arm seized hard and then leaned up and gasped.  Steve choked and gagged and pulled away and Clint was too stunned to do anything other than let him go.  He rolled to the left, spitting blood and coughing, and clambered to his feet.  He looked around wildly with terrified, confused, bright blue eyes.  Eyes that were _alive_.  Lungs that were breathing and a heart that was beating.  _He was alive._   He wiped the blood from his mouth and nose and looked at it like he didn’t know what it was or how it had come to be there.  “What?  What’s going on?”

Clint had no idea.  He stood slowly, shaking in surprise, and then the Hulk’s roar vibrated the lab again and Steve was running across the room.  “Bruce!  _Bruce!_ ”  The Hulk had Lahey pinned against the wall, a humongous green fist raised and ready to descend.  Bullets peppered the beast’s back as the SHIELD agents tried to stop him, but no one could.  The situation was out of control.  It always had been, and more blood was about to be spilled for this insanity.  The Hulk was going to crush Lahey.  He was going to kill him.  “No!”

And Steve caught the Hulk’s fist in both of his hands and pushed back with all his might.

The monster’s eyes stared into Steve’s.  “I’m okay,” Steve gasped to Bruce.  There was not an ounce of doubt in his voice.  “I’m okay!  It’s alright!”

The world was still for a long moment as Steve held back the incredible power of the Hulk.  Those enraged black eyes held fast, clearly trapped by the desire to kill, the ardent need for vengeance. For _anything_ to fill the pit of hurt and fury and grief inside Bruce that was aching and empty and hungry.  But reality, as crazy as it was, sunk in and drove back the pain.  The monster was gone in a blink.

Clint could hardly believe it.  The Hulk shrunk back into Banner, green skin fading to healthy, pink flesh, the bulk of muscles and madness disappearing and leaving a man who was hunched and breathing heavily in the tattered remains of his clothes.  Steve somehow managed a feeble smile – _what the hell what the hell how is this possible?_ – and then gently pulled Banner closer to him in a shaking hug.  “I’m okay,” he swore softly.  “I’m alright.”

The lab was silent.  Nobody moved.  “Holy shit,” Clint whispered again.

What in the world had just happened?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Just a warning for the rest of the story that some of Bruce's past (and Steve's past) I'll be making up based off of what's in the comics and what's in the movies. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Bruce was downright confused.  Totally at a loss.  It took a lot to stump him, to leave him completely bereft of a plausible explanation.  But this…  This had rather effectively managed it.

“I’m okay,” Steve said yet again as the nurses and doctors surrounded him.  They were swarming him, and they had been since the Avengers been rescued from the lab and taken to the SHIELD office just outside of Times Square a few hours ago.  He sat clad only in his underwear, more exposed and vulnerable than Bruce thought would be comfortable for him after what happened, and he was willingly subjecting himself to countless tests.  The doctors were running them in rapid succession, blood work and x-rays and MRIs and PET scans.  They had hooked Steve up to an EEG and EKG.  They had run every analysis available multiple times to double check and triple check, extracting vial after vial of blood from the soldier, performing muscle and skin and bone biopsies, searching for clues.  As he always was, however, Steve was true to his word: he _was_ okay.  There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him.  He looked a tad pale, and there were two pink spots on each temple and a dozen or more along his spine where he’d been injected in the chamber.  A few bruises lined his wrists and ankles where he’d struggled against the restraints of that horrible table in the lab.  But other than that he seemed _perfectly_ healthy.  His vital signs were all completely normal.  There was no evidence of stress on his body, his heart and lungs and other organs functioning well within ordinary limits (which were extraordinary limits compared to everyone else).  There were no obvious changes to his physiology; it would take more time for genetic results to come back, but the infirmary’s biomedical sensors hadn’t detected anything aberrant or worrisome or even different from his last physical a few months ago.  Nobody seemed to know what to make of it.

For a man who’d died of radiation exposure and cardiac arrest, he seemed remarkably well.

Maybe it was a miracle.  Bruce didn’t find that terribly comforting.  Neither did Barton apparently, for the archer had stayed close to Steve the entire time the doctors had run their gamut of tests.  His own arm had been tended, stitched and bandaged and put into a sling, and a few nurses had wrapped his bruised ribs.  He looked worn and white and exhausted, pained if the tight lines about his eyes and mouth were any indication, but he’d silently refused to move away or even sit.  He was a stalwart sentinel standing guard over a close friend he’d nearly lost.  He was out of the way, watching from behind the physicians as they worked, but his presence was determined and unwavering.

Steve had been quiet and compliant through all this, but Bruce could see now that his patience was starting to wear thin.  He’d allowed them to examine him thoroughly, sat still as they’d veritably drained the blood out of his body, reacted with outstanding and mind-numbing composure considering the trauma he’d just endured.  He’d even suffered through a spinal tap, which seemed warranted considering Lahey’s drug had been introduced into the CSF, and the procedure hadn’t been pleasant given his immunity to all forms of anesthesia and analgesics.  Still, when a nurse came with another series of vials in her hands and an apologetic look plastered all over her young face, he just shook his head and pulled his arm away.  “I’m _fine_ ,” he insisted, his tone tense.  “This is getting a little ridiculous.  There’s nothing wrong.  I feel fine.”

Clint shook his head, sharing a glance with Bruce.  His eyes shone in unmasked worry.  “Steve, you died.”

The enormity of that simple statement was painful, and Steve winced.  He opened his mouth to protest or refute it, but he couldn’t.  He’d said earlier that he remembered everything that had happened in the chamber, down to the excruciating pain of the Gamma radiation exposure, but after that things had gotten blurry and indistinct.  He’d “blacked out”, as he’d put it, before awakening in Clint’s arms, apparently unaware of what had happened, of how very serious the situation had gotten.  His lungs had stopped.  His heart had stopped.  The radiation destroyed his organs, the damage caused by Dan’s drug aside.  He had been _dead_ , dead beyond the point of resuscitation, and he had been that way for more than just a few seconds.  For minutes.  That was unbelievable and distressing to say the least.

Bruce knew more about the super soldier serum than most, probably more than anyone else alive.  There were a lot of mysteries about it: how to recreate it, how it truly functioned, how far it could be pushed.  This had gone some ways to answer that last question, but even still, Bruce didn’t think the serum could have repaired that magnitude of systemic damage, that amount of widespread cellular destruction, let alone so quickly.  And he knew Steve was strong, the strongest human on earth, but he didn’t think Rogers could normally stand against the Hulk like he had.  He was loathed to admit it, but he believed Dan had been right: if anyone could have survived that procedure, surely it was Captain America.  The serum afforded Steve amazing resilience and regeneration, and that had been the exact thought process that had driven Bruce to apply more radiation earlier in the experiment.  Maybe that had kickstarted whatever reaction Dan had wanted to see.  Maybe it had worked.  And maybe Steve’s innate healing and strength had been amplified by some combination of the radiation and adrenaline.  He would never know unless he looked at Steve’s test results.

 _No._   He wasn’t going to do that.  He wasn’t going to look at any more data associated with this nightmare.  To hell with figuring it out. 

But even as his heart yelled no, his mind kept crunching at it.  Whatever Dan’s drug had been meant to do, there was no sign of it in Steve’s system now.  So either it had done nothing and his body had flushed it or the effects had been transient.  _Or they haven’t happened yet._ Acknowledging that was even more distressing than acknowledging that Steve had died.

Steve sighed, apparently unwilling to acknowledge much of anything.  “I’m a little tired,” he said, as though he thought that admitting he wasn’t totally one hundred percent would allay their anxiety.  He forced some measure of bravado into his voice.  “And sore.  But it’s nothing.  I’m fine.  Aren’t I?”  He looked at Bruce for confirmation and clearly expected it without reservation.

Bruce didn’t know what to say.  He didn’t want to be doubtful, to cast some measure of reality on this seeming fantasy of everyone emerging alive and unscathed, but he had to be honest with himself.  He wasn’t sure if Steve was okay or if he would be.  He wasn’t sure of anything.  Still, Rogers was trusting him to deliver some sort of answer, so he said what he could.  “Everything’s coming back normal.”  It was almost as if Steve was betrayed by his placating words.  At that, the guilt that had been plaguing him since coming back from the suffocating grip of the Hulk grew sharper and more intense.  The logical part of his mind told him he’d been helpless, a pawn, a goddamn tool in Dan’s schemes.  The rational part of him knew there’d been no choice, not with Tony so seriously injured and Clint bound and threatened as he had been.  But guilt wasn’t rational by any means.  It didn’t abide by facts or truths or reason.  And he felt so miserably ashamed that he almost hadn’t come back here after slipping out sometime ago to check on Tony.  Dan was his colleague, his friend, and he’d suspected something had been wrong but he hadn’t stopped it.  It had been his faulty calculations, his flawed science, that had exposed Steve to a fatal amount of Gamma radiation (and seemingly for nothing, which was more aggravating and disgusting).  He’d hurt Steve and helped a madman experiment on another person, on a living, breathing human being.  He’d been unwilling, yes, but he’d still done it.  And if Steve hadn’t miraculously come back to them, Bruce would have been responsible for his death.

A simple “it’s not your fault” really wasn’t going to absolve him.  As a scientist, what he’d done was morally detestable.  Even if nobody held him responsible, even if Steve, as good-natured and self-sacrificing as he was, didn’t blame him, Bruce blamed himself.  This was going to become another scar on his psyche, another thing he carried around with him.  Another wound that bled anger like poison.  The thing was he’d become so efficient at seeming calm and in control that he could fool everyone, even himself.  So he swallowed down the poison of his shame like it was nothing and donned the visage of a caring friend.  “You took a huge shock to your system, Steve,” he said.  “It needs to be checked out.”

Steve’s face abruptly turned unreadable, stony and rigid, and Bruce couldn’t help but feel waves of guilt break against his heart.  It was hard to stand still, to not waver or retreat or hide.  He shied away from confrontation; that was the way he’d learned to control and protect himself.  Was he imagining the anger shining in Steve’s eyes?  Was the pain and hatred real or just a product of his own conscience?  In a blink that hard look was gone, and Steve sagged wearily in submission.  He held his arm out to the nurse, who’d been watching the exchange with a wide, frightened gaze.  She hesitated a moment more until Steve gave her a small nod.  She set her supplies to the hospital bed beside her patient and snapped blue nitrile gloves on her hands before preparing to draw Steve’s blood again.  Clint came a little closer at seeing Steve’s slumped shoulders and downcast expression.  Maybe Steve had known that these efforts he’d made to brush this ordeal aside like it was nothing were silly and futile, but having that thrown in his face was obviously dismaying.  Clint set his unhurt hand to Steve’s broad shoulder and tugged him just a little closer for comfort.  Bruce hadn’t thought the hardened sharpshooter capable of such unimposing tenderness.  “You’re okay,” Clint promised with half an encouraging grin.

Steve nodded and drew a deep breath.  He hardly reacted as the nurse stuck the needle in his vein.  “How’s Stark?”

Bruce was grateful the subject of the conversation had turned from Steve and what had been done to him.  He released a slow breath.  “He’ll be alright.  The bullet wasn’t as close to his spinal cord as I feared.  They got it out during surgery.  He’s in recovery.”  It was remarkable, really, considering how close Tony had come to dying.  It was downright flabbergasting that the four of them had walked away from their hellish experience alive and relatively unscathed.  He’d been a little reticent to leave Tony alone in the intensive care ward.  It was difficult to see him so pale and so weak and so _quiet_.  Stark was loud and rambled a mile a minute and never sat still, so watching the motionless, silent body lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a wall of medical machinery and plugged into numerous IVs was disturbing.  And even though Bruce _knew_ he’d be okay, he couldn’t shake the fear that he wouldn’t be.  At least Pepper had been there, having come immediately once SHIELD had contacted her about Tony’s condition.  Bruce didn’t know how much she knew of what had happened, but she hadn’t asked him about it.  She’d been scared and worried but so wonderfully calm and tender as she’d taken up vigil in a chair beside Tony’s bed, so he hadn’t fretted about leaving Stark in her hands.  “He’ll be off his feet for a while, but there won’t be any long term damage.”

“That’s good,” Steve said.  He offered Bruce a faint smile.  “You saved his life.”

Coming from anyone else, he would have argued.  He was in no mood to be coddled or to have the obvious burden of shame lifted away from his shoulders.  Steve was sincere, so much so that it was almost difficult for Bruce to stay still under his open and grateful gaze.  Things were a bit hazy from the panic and terror and the Hulk’s consuming rage banging constantly against his mind, but Steve’s calm words and strong hands and soothing presence he remembered very clearly.  Rogers had been a rock during it all, steady and sure, and he’d offered up his strength and encouragement to Bruce as easily as he’d offered up his body to Dan.  Of them all, Steve had the most reason to be angry, but he wasn’t, at least not so much that it was noticeable.  He had never let his emotions get the better of him, never faltered in the face of his fear or succumbed to the fires of his rage.  Bruce couldn’t fathom so much restraint and control.  Steve had been so calm, so focused on the logical choices, acting as a shield between Bruce and the Hulk as much as he had been one between Lahey’s threats and Clint and Tony.  He’d sacrificed himself without a moment of doubt.  That was intimidating.  Everything about him was intimidating.  And this whole incident had only caused all of Bruce’s insecurities to resurface.

Bruce managed to push them all back down.  “You did, too,” he answered, feeling uncomfortable and so damn raw that it was hard not to run from this.  It was hard to say what needed to be said, what a good friend would say to someone who’d saved him.  “Thanks for what you did back there for him.  And for me.”

Steve smiled again.  “You’re welcome.”  He wasn’t dismissive, but to him what he’d done wasn’t a big deal.  It was _never_ a big deal.  He was Captain America, and saving people was what Captain America did.  _Perfection_.  Physical, mental, and emotional perfection.  Some part of Bruce wanted to cry.

The doors to the infirmary swished open.  Natasha Romanoff and Maria Hill entered.  They both looked stoic, though Romanoff darted a questioning glance toward Barton that Steve didn’t notice.  Bruce watched Clint give a little nod, dropping his hand from Steve’s shoulder and gingerly trading his weight to his other leg.  The two women came to stand in front of Steve’s bed, Hill bearing a tablet computer.  She finished tapping her fingers to it and looked up at Rogers.  “Fury’s on his way down,” she announced.  Steve didn’t look pleased, and Hill shook her head.  “You can’t expect him to not be concerned.  Four of the Avengers were held hostage by a relative nobody.  That tends to put up red flags around here.  How are you feeling?”

“Fine.  I assume you took Doctor Lahey into custody?”

Hill seemed slightly surprised at how easily Steve was talking about all of this.  Defense mechanisms came in many forms, but Bruce thought denial and detachment were among the most effective.  “He’s down in interrogation.  We’ve got agents crawling through Lahey’s lab and the rest of his so-called research institute.  The analysts at the Hub are running everything they can through the computers to try and get a better picture of what actually went on before you guys stumbled into his world.  We also ran identity checks on the men who helped him do this.  They were mostly mercenaries from the Balkans and Turkey.  No shortage of guns for hire over there.”

Bruce shook his head.  “How the hell would Dan know how to get in contact with people like that?”  The SHIELD agents looked at him like he was crazy, and maybe he was because some part of him still couldn’t quite believe that Dan Lahey, the self-proclaimed pacifist who had never stood up for himself while the other post-docs and even his students at Culver ridiculed him, could have orchestrated something like this.  He couldn’t fathom how someone who’d hardly been able to make eye contact with anyone he found even the slightest bit intimidating could shoot a man, take another hostage, and experiment on a third.  Not to mention all of the people who’d been his prior test subjects who he’d murdered.  And it wasn’t just that Lahey had done these things.  The moral consequences had been completely nonexistent to him.  Bruce’s mind raced, going back over those long and difficult minutes, trying to understand. “He said he was experimenting on himself.  Said he’d transformed himself into this new Dan Lahey.”

That didn’t sit well with any of them.  “I’ve tried talking to him,” Natasha said, folding her arms across her chest.  Bruce wondered with a grimace what Black Widow meant by “talking”.  “But he’s not cooperating.  I’m not sure he’s doing it intentionally.  He’s out of his mind hysterical.  It could all be an act, but he’s refused to say anything until he can talk to you, Bruce.”

Bruce felt something inside him shrivel.  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“It might be our only chance to get through to him.”  The new voice from the entrance of the infirmary drew their attention, and Nick Fury, as tall, dark, and imposing as ever, strolled through the main doors.  He was dressed in black leather, and his one eye was narrowed with disdain.  Obviously this entire mess had frustrated him, but his glare softened as he approached their small group.  He appraised his top agents sadly, one more sadly than the others.  “You alright, Cap?”

Steve nodded.  If he was at all irritated at being asked yet again how he was doing, he didn’t show it in front of Fury.  “What does it matter what Lahey has to say?” Clint asked, glancing between Bruce and Fury.  “The evidence is pretty compelling that the guy is crazy.  He belongs in a box.  A really goddamn small one.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.  Doctor Banner is right.  By all accounts, he should not have had the means, financial or otherwise, to build a project like this,” Hill explained.  “As you know we have hints that his resources link back to AIM, and that makes sense given his hiring of the mercs involved in what happened, but we have no idea who or what is really behind this.”

“Unless you think this drug he used on himself could have empowered him enough to do something like this on his own,” Fury said.

That statement was directed at Bruce.  Honestly, he wasn’t even sure _what_ Dan’s drug did.  Steve had had a hell of a dose of it, and it hadn’t seemed to affect him.  And this concept of molding emotions to build a different man?  One didn’t _need_ drugs to do that.  Chemicals could indeed affect the brain; they acted as mood stabilizers, altered a man’s perceptions of reality and himself, relaxed the body and mind or heightened sensations.  The entirety of brain function was based upon tiny packets of chemical compounds flying between cells, neurons firing in an immeasurably complex and delicate balance.  That balance was susceptible to interference, interference that produced widespread and sometimes unpredictable results.  But fundamentally changing a man’s personality from a shy, reticent, socially inept whipping boy to a bold, callous, psychotic madman?  Drugs could certainly do that, but were they necessary?  This was why Bruce (and many of Lahey’s detractors over the years) had thought so lowly of his science.  The boundary between emotions and personality and _spirit_ (for a lack of a better term) and biology were so poorly defined, which in turn made quantitatively measuring the effects of this drug or that medication extraordinarily difficult (and, to make it even worse, subjective since emotions were inherently bound to a person).

But all that was neither here nor there.  “No, I don’t think he did this alone.”

“Which leads us back to AIM, or whatever is left of it.  This is twice in six months they created a scientist insane and capable enough to cause something dangerous to happen.  We got lucky that this ended alright.”  Fury looked displeased.  “Obviously these guys are out there, hiding in the shadows.  Stark shutting down Aldrich Killian just knocked a cog out of a machine.  I want to know who built the machine and who’s pouring fuel into it.”

“Lahey didn’t seem interested in doing someone else’s dirty work,” Barton said.  “He was obsessed with his own craziness.”

“Obsession can be a useful tool,” Fury returned, “something we can turn against him, which is why I’d like for you to speak with him, Doctor Banner.”  Bruce couldn’t help but stiffen slightly.  Fury eyed him calmly, forlornly even.  Apologetically.  “He seems to have it in his head that you care about his science.  That you were in it with him.”

Bruce shook his head emphatically.  Maybe he didn’t need to defend himself, but he couldn’t stop the words from leaving his mouth.  “I don’t.  I wasn’t.”  His eyes flew to Steve, expecting to find the soldier glaring at him questioningly, but Steve was sitting quietly with his eyes blankly focused on the needle drawing the blood from his arm.  He seemed deflated, not upset exactly, but not entirely committed to what was going on around him, either.  A million miles away.  He might have been trying to hide behind a brave front, but he was shaken.  Deeply so.

“Of course you weren’t,” Fury quietly answered instead, “and nobody believes you were except him.  It’s a way in and that’s all.  If you can get him talking about the science, maybe we can learn something about what it was he was trying to do.  And if not that, something about who hired him to do it.”  Bruce didn’t know what to think or feel at this point.  He was exhausted, and he’d foolishly hoped his involvement in this nightmare had already ended.  He didn’t want to go any further, participate anymore.  He didn’t want to consult or offer his opinions or help with any analysis.  He just wanted to go back to the relative safety of Stark Tower and tinker and putter around with his plants and _hide_.  _Denial and detachment._   Pretty effective.

Fury sighed before stepping closer to Bruce.  “Look, doc, I can’t force you to talk to him.  After what he did, I appreciate that you want to walk away.  But I suspect you might want answers as badly as I do.  And if…”  He dropped his tone, although why he bothered Bruce couldn’t say.  Steve could surely hear him.  His senses went far beyond those of a normal man.  “If there’s something to be learned about what he did, we need to learn it sooner rather than later.”

Bruce wanted to deny that.  He really, _really_ did.  He was scared of what he might discover.  He was even more scared of losing control again.  However, Fury was right and he knew it.  And he was nothing if not a pragmatist.  If Dan was asking for him, he needed to go.  He needed to do what he could to make this right.  “Alright,” he agreed.

Fury nodded.  He tried to hide his relief, but Bruce was too perceptive to miss it.  “Agent Romanoff will go with you.  You won’t be alone with him just in case.”  _Just in case of what?  I lose it?  Or he does?_

“If you don’t mind, sir,” Clint said, stepping away from Steve’s bed.  “I’d like to go as well.”

Fury appraised Barton sternly for a second, but the archer was tall and steadfast in his request.  A moment passed before Fury nodded.  “Permission granted.  Kid gloves, Agent Barton.”

“Yes, sir,” Clint responded.  If he was at all bothered by the reminder, he didn’t show it.  A black jacket with the SHIELD emblem on its shoulder was laid across the bed beside Steve’s, and Barton turned to it, slipping his uninjured arm into one sleeve and shrugging into the garment without so much as a wince.

While Clint did that, Steve pressed a piece of gauze over the small, bleeding hole in his arm as the nurse moved away with her samples.  “I’ll watch from outside,” he said.

Now Fury did look doubtful.  “I can’t let you do that.”

“He won’t be able to see me.”  That was probably the case, and it was a sensible precaution since Steve’s presence could incite Lahey like a vampire smelling fresh blood.  It sounded like a reprehensibly bad idea to allow Dan any access to Rogers.  And he might have been acting completely calm and controlled, but there was no telling how Steve might behave faced with the man who’d experimented on him like he’d been nothing more than a convenient test subject and then killed him.  Even Captain America had limits.  He had to.

The Director actually looked uncomfortable for a second, as if he was being forced to admit something he didn’t want to admit.  “It’s not that.  You need to stay here until they clear you.”

Steve’s brow creased in frustration.  “They’re done, aren’t they?”  He turned a hard, expectant look toward the doctor in charge of his care, challenging him to disagree.  “Aren’t you?”

The doctor, a middle-aged man named Wright, was flustered at being put on the spot by his patient.  He glanced among his colleagues and assistants and touched the pad in his hand a few times.  He pushed his glasses up on his nose nervously.  “We’ve run through every test we could, Director.  Captain Rogers seems completely healthy, although I’d honestly like someone with more knowledge of the serum to take a look at these figures.  To me they seem well within normal parameters, but I might have missed something more subtle.”  Wright winced in embarrassment.  “This is honestly the first time I’ve performed some of these analyses on serum-enhanced tissue and fluids.  And the genetic results aren’t back yet and won’t be for a day or two.  An expert should take a look at that as well.”

Steve apparently hadn’t heard any part of that other than “completely healthy”.   “See?  They’re finished.”  He stood, his bare feet stepping to the gleaming tiled floor.  He reached for a pile of SHIELD issue sweats that rested on the chair beside his bed and started getting dressed.  “This is my mission, and I’d like to see it through.”

Fury clenched his jaw.  “You can’t.  I need to relieve you of duty, Cap.”

Steve stiffened, halting for a brief moment with his arms half in the sleeves of his undershirt and his head partway through as well.  The muscles of his back and chest tightened.  Bruce watched as Barton and Romanoff shared another look, this one beset with frustrated helplessness, and Hill made a point of returning her attention to her tablet.  Steve pulled the shirt down over his torso.  He stuffed his legs into the gray pants and then stood to his full, impressive height.  “You don’t need to do that.  I’m fit for duty,” he calmly answered, but his eyes were teeming with hurt and anger and betrayal.  “I am, Nick.  I swear to you that there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“You’re probably right,” Fury conceded.  “But until we know what really happened, I need you to sit things out.  Once we’re sure everything is fine, you’re back in.”  Bruce had to imagine that Captain America was among SHIELD’s greatest assets, and he got the impression that Steve working for SHIELD was more an agreement than employment, so upsetting Rogers wasn’t in their best interest.  But it would be worse to let Steve out into another dangerous situation ignorant of the true nature of his condition.  If there was a condition at all, and right then all signs indicated there wasn’t one.

Steve was still.  He stared obstinately at Fury for a tense a moment, every hard line of his body radiating his displeasure with this situation. It was like a battle of wills between the SHIELD Director and the super soldier, and it went on for what felt like forever.  Eventually Steve released a long sigh and looked down.  He was a soldier, through and through, and as long as Fury was above him in the chain of command, he’d follow orders.  “Yes, sir.”

Fury nodded in appreciation.  His face immediately softened in relief.  “Don’t worry.  We’ll get this figured out as soon as possible.”

Steve didn’t look appeased.  He reached a hand to his ear and wiped at the dried blood that was still crusted there in disgust.  After being poked and prodded and thoroughly assessed for hours, he couldn’t bear to be still any longer.  He reached down to the other side of the bed and grabbed his shield.  One of the STRIKE agents had recovered it from the lab and brought it to him a few hours ago.  “Is it okay if I leave?  I’d like to get cleaned up.  Maybe get some sleep.”  Somehow Bruce doubted he would be able to sleep.  But there was really no reason he needed to stay in the infirmary.  Bruce didn’t think Fury could keep Steve there – especially not in light of what had happened to him – and he really didn’t want to see the SHIELD Director try.  He hoped for Steve’s sake Fury would recognize all of that.

He did.  “Sure.  Get some rest.”

Steve moved away without so much as a glance at Bruce.  Bruce knew he shouldn’t but he took that personally, took it as a sign that Steve _did_ blame him, if not for what had happened then for being stripped of his competence.  Stripped yet again of his control over what happened to him.  Clint stepped closer to Rogers for a moment, murmuring something softly to his friend.  Steve nodded and grasped the archer’s shoulder affectionately.  “It’ll be alright, Cap.  Just take it easy.  We have this,” Romanoff promised, her face stern and confident but her eyes shining in compassion.

He was gone a breath after that.  Bruce watched him leave, feeling increasingly ashamed and angry again.  This wasn’t fair.  Nothing about this was fair.  Nothing about this was right.

Natasha was in front of him, drawing his attention. “You ready to do this, doc?”

“No, but let’s get it over with before I change my mind.”

“Just stay cool.”

_Easier said than done._

* * *

Dan slouched in a gray, metal chair inside a large interrogation room.  The walls were a smooth, dark gray devoid of textures, seams, and weaknesses.  The ceiling was the same aside from a few recessed light fixtures spreading bright, blaring illumination over the prisoner and the table at which he sat.  There was a large window next to the solitary entrance, the gleaming glass a one-way view inside the cell.  It was a steel box, impenetrable and inescapable.  The sort of place SHIELD held its most violent offenders: terrorists, dictators, mass murderers.  Evil men who caused maximum destruction and casualties simply because they enjoyed it.  Seeing his old friend there, flanked by two armed agents, was alarming to say the least.

“It goes without saying,” Natasha said as they watched through the window in the small antechamber outside the room, “but let’s keep any sensitive information about Rogers to a minimum.”  Bruce stared numbly, distantly, trying to summon up the calm strength that these SHIELD agents and Steve brandished so easily.  “Okay, Bruce?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”  Clint opened the door.  Natasha strolled nonchalantly inside and Bruce followed, adrenaline surging through him.  Clint shut the door behind him and rested his good hand against the handle of the gun in the holster about his thigh.

Dan didn’t turn, tapping his fingers on the gleaming, metallic table.  “Doctor Lahey,” Natasha called.  She stepped around the table to look at Lahey’s face.  Hers was damn near unreadable, calm but there was just a hint of power and anger in her stoic, blue eyes.  After all, this man had kidnapped two SHIELD agents, two of their own, and hurt them both.  Barton just looked flat-out disgusted, like he’d be more than willing to save everyone the money, time, and effort required to try and imprison this lunatic.  But he only moved to the other side of the table, a dark wraith glaring malevolently.  Natasha folded her arms across her chest.  “Doctor Banner is here.”

Dan immediately wrenched around.  His face was badly bruised from his run-in with the Hulk and Iron Man’s fist.  His nose had clearly been broken, and he sported a nasty-looking black eye.  His hair was mussed, and his fine clothes were rumpled.  But at seeing Bruce his bloodied lips pulled into a huge, relieved smile.  He was missing a couple of teeth.  “Bruce!  Oh, great.  Great.  Now we can talk.”

Maybe it was stupid, but Bruce’s feet wouldn’t move him any further into the room.  They felt like they were utterly glued to the floor.  He worked his hands nervously together, battered by such a storm of emotion that he didn’t know how to feel.  All he knew was he needed to keep calm.  The two guards eyed him warily.  “What do you want to talk about?”

“Everything,” Dan said excitedly.  Lahey cut right to the chase.  “Is he still alive?”

Right away this had veered into territory Bruce didn’t like.  He glanced at Natasha on the other side of the table, but she offered a slight nod.  “Yes.”

Dan’s face broke in such an expression of euphoria and pride that Bruce thought he was going to be sick just looking at it.  “I knew it,” he murmured, his eyes glazed in absolute joy.  He slammed his hand to the table in excitement, a loud bang echoing through the vacuous room that made Bruce flinch.  “I knew it!”  He laughed loudly.  “I knew he would survive!  I knew I was right!”

Clint beside Dan in a blink.  Bruce wasn’t even sure he saw him move.  The archer was leaning down over the scientist with a stare that would have made anyone shrivel in terror.  “Let’s get something straight, you sick piece of shit,” he hissed.  “What you did today?  It wasn’t science.  It was _torture_.”  Dan’s eyes widened in fear, and he stilled his celebrations like ice had frozen over him.  Clint positioned himself over Dan’s shoulder.  “You strapped my friend down on a table and experimented on him.  There aren’t words to describe how much that pisses me off.  You’re going away for a long, _long_ time.  And you are never, _ever_ going to so much as _look_ at Captain Rogers again.”

Dan didn’t blink or even twitch as Clint threatened him, but Bruce could see he was scared witless.  This was the first time since this had started that Dan seemed afraid.  Regretful of what he had done, but not because he thought it was wrong.  Because he was scared of what would happen to him.  The silence that followed was rife with the threat of violence.  “Clint,” Natasha called softly.  Clint leaned back up and looked at her.  She shook her head slightly, and he backed away.  “We’re not here to talk about what you did to Captain Rogers, Doctor,” she reminded.

“Just tell me if it worked,” Dan softly implored.  “I just need to know that.”

“No way in hell,” Clint answered tersely.  “You don’t deserve to know anything.”

Natasha braced her hands on the table.  “We want you to tell us who you’re working for.  We’re certain your grant didn’t come from NIH.  And we know that somebody had to put you in contact with the mercenaries you hired.  How did you know Captain Rogers and Agent Barton were coming to your lab today?”

“I didn’t,” Dan said.  “I wasn’t lying about that.”

Clearly Natasha didn’t know if that was the truth.  Clint obviously thought it wasn’t.  “You seemed awfully prepared to deal with two SHIELD agents.  There’s no way you did this by yourself, so you might as well cooperate.  It’s the only thing you’ve got left at this point to earn you some leniency,” Natasha continued.  “AIM is involved.  You need to tell us who specifically and where.”

“There wasn’t anyone specifically,” Dan answered.  He was getting more and more agitated, but Bruce had a sinking suspicion it wasn’t because he didn’t know the answers to their questions.  It was because he wanted to ask his own.

Natasha came closer.  “Talk to us.  Now.”

Dan opened his hands helplessly on the table.  “Hansen contacted me last year, said she had a way to get funding for unorthodox projects.  They’d helped her finish something she’d been working on for a long time.  Before you ask, she never mentioned anything about Extremis, just that she couldn’t get a grant or help from anybody else.  We met at a conference on microbiology in Seattle a couple of years before that.  She told me I just needed to move to the Hopkins Institute, which I did, and everything would be taken care of, which it was.  That’s it.  They got me the equipment, the lab space, the reactor, the assistants…  The only thing I had to give up was the rights to anything I developed.”

Perhaps that could be true, but that still didn’t explain the firepower.  “How did you find the mercs?” Natasha asked.

“I didn’t.  Somebody else called about a week ago.  A woman.”

“Did you know her?” Clint asked.

“No.  She had an accent of some sort.  I don’t know.  I’m not good with that stuff.”  He sighed.  “She said she knew about the troubles I was having with the Gamma exposure and that she could make sure I got Bruce Banner’s help.  When I asked how, she just told me not to worry about it.  Just to contact Bruce and invite him.  Last night the soldiers just showed up at the institute.  They told me if I wanted to get my experiment to run, it might require some sacrifices.  It was pretty obvious what they meant.”

“And you didn’t stop to think that it was wrong.  You just figured you needed to use Tony against me,” Bruce supplied angrily.

“I didn’t want to shoot him,” Dan claimed.  “Just threaten him.  That was the plan.  But there was no other way I could keep the Hulk, Captain America, and Iron Man under control.  I needed to remove Stark out of the equation.”  Maybe that lent credence to Dan’s claim that he really hadn’t known that SHIELD had sent Steve and Clint.  Had someone else, though?  “That’s it.  I don’t have anything else to tell you.”

“That’s not good enough,” Clint said.  “I find it hard to believe a man of your intellect could be so monumentally _stupid_ as to think you could do something like this and get away with it.  What was your plan after your experiment failed, huh?  Where the hell did you think you could go where we wouldn’t find you?  You shot the world’s most recognizable man and nearly killed a national hero.”

“I didn’t care about getting away with it,” Lahey hotly responded.  “I only cared about making it work.  And it did work.  Didn’t it?”  He turned again to look at Bruce, who still hadn’t moved from the door.  Bruce drew a deep breath and stood a little taller.  This whole thing repulsed him, and the desperate shine in Dan’s eyes only made it worse.  “Did it work?”

“Eyes here, asshole,” Clint snarled.  “We’re not finished.”

But Dan refused to be dissuaded.  “Bruce, come on.  Did it work?”

He succeeded in goading him into an answer.  “I don’t know,” Bruce finally admitted.  He pushed himself away from the wall and came a tad closer.  “What was it supposed to do?”

“I told you.  It expanded his mind.”

Anger coursed over Bruce, hot and demanding, and he felt the Hulk pushing and pushing and _pushing_.  “Don’t play games with me, Dan!  You wanted my help.  You made me do something terrible to a man that I consider a friend, and I don’t even know why!”

“A friend, huh,” Dan said.  He leveled cruel eyes on Bruce.  “Not just the answer to a question you’re too scared to make yourself ask.”

Bruce blanched.  His heart felt cold and heavy in his chest, like he’d been caught doing something wrong.  Dread and shame stabbed ice into his heart.  These weak, debilitating feelings didn’t last long against his anger.  Nothing ever did.  “Who the hell are you to judge me?” he asked.  Dan didn’t answer.  “I have questions, sure.  I have a lot of questions.  But I don’t hurt people to answer them!”  Lahey’s eyes filled with regret for a moment, and he looked away.  “I don’t kill people to prove that I’m right!”

“It wasn’t about me being right,” Dan insisted.  “It was about the science being right.”

Clint looked confused.  “There’s a difference?”

“Yes!  Man evolving from apes.  The earth orbiting the sun.  Ramming two tiny atoms together and producing enough energy to destroy a city.  These things were correct, but at the time they seemed crazy.  It doesn’t matter what you think of me.  I’ll gladly be labeled as a lunatic if it gets my point across.  All that matters is that what I think is _real_.”

“That emotions can alter the world around us?”  Clint laughed condescendingly.  “Sorry, Doctor, but I call bullshit on that one.”

“You have no vision,” Lahey countered, shaking his head in self-defense and disgust.  “You don’t understand what I tried to do.”

“Oh, I think I understand,” Clint returned icily.  “I think you held Captain America down and pumped your poison into his body and flooded him with so much radiation that his lungs bled and his heart stopped beating.”

Bruce swallowed through a tight throat, trying not to think about that and the part he’d played in it.  Thankfully, Natasha was calm and in control.  “You’re right, Doctor Lahey,” she said, glancing warily at Clint and silently imploring him to back down.  “We don’t understand.  Tell us what you were trying to do.”

Lahey sighed, rubbing his fingers together worriedly again.  It was as if the enormity of the situation was finally getting through to him, that he’d done something horrendous and unforgivable.  “The drug’s supposed to augment cerebral capacity.  Hugely increase synaptic efficiency.  Rewire the brain.  I guess that’s a good term for it.  Rewire it to achieve maximum neurologic output on a cellular level.  Like steroids for thought.  Like a super serum for the mind.”

“Well, it didn’t do that,” Bruce responded.  “And you’re damn lucky he didn’t die.”

At that Dan looked positively crushed, though it wasn’t because he’d damaged another person.  It was because his experiment _hadn’t worked._   He was smart and perceptive and realized right away what Bruce and the SHIELD agents weren’t telling him: Steve was alive and _unaffected_ by his drug.  “I don’t understand it,” he whispered.  A fat tear escaped his left eye to roll down his battered face.  “How…  I mean, if he survived, the reaction should have been instantaneous.  The infusion into his cells _happened_ , and the Gamma should have…  I don’t understand.”  Suddenly his blank gaze sharpened, and he looked wildly at Bruce.  “You need to get me the data.  I need to look at it.”

“This is unbelievable,” Clint said disparagingly.

Dan went on, uncaring, driven.  Obsessed.  “Blood results.  We need DNA evidence.  We should be able to _see_ it in his DNA.  It had to work!  It had to!”

“It didn’t,” Bruce argued.

“God damn it, Bruce!”  Lahey was up and out of his chair.  Clint immediately grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back down roughly, and the two guards had their rifles securely aimed at Dan’s chest.  Natasha had drawn her gun as well.  “This is our opportunity to pioneer something extraordinary!  Try to envision what we could learn about the brain and the body and the relationship between them!  The connection between the mind and its underlying biology is the greatest frontier of science!  Imagine if we could fundamentally explain the chemical and physical underpinnings of thought and reason and emotion.  _Of a soul._ ”

“We can’t,” Bruce returned.  “There are some questions that have no answers.”

Dan grew more and more frustrated.  “What the hell is that?  What happened to you?  You used to have ambition and ideas.  You used to _think._   The science used to matter to you!”

Bruce shook his head.  “It doesn’t.  Not like this.”

Any shred of sanity Lahey might have still had all but disappeared.  He choked on a sob, a frustrated, _helpless_ sob.  Despite everything, something inside Bruce ached at seeing his friend reduced to this.  He knew about obsession.  He knew its perversities, its pain and its pleasures, more than most.  And he knew how failure hurt, how much low you felt when everything you worked for turned out to be a lie.  Turned out to be wrong.  When the consequences were vast and awful.  In this small way, at least, he commiserated.  He sympathized.  He pitied the other man for enslaving himself to his theories.  Without them, Dan’s world had tilted and turned upside down.  “You do care, Bruce.  I know you do.  You want to know what makes one soul good and another bad.  You want to know if it can be _fixed_.  It drives you mad, not knowing.  You’ve convinced yourself that things just happen and there doesn’t have to be a reason, but there _is_ a reason and you need to understand it.  You need to know how _who_ we are turns us into _what_ we are.  You’re fooling yourself if you think there isn’t an answer!  Together you and I can find it!”

That went deep into his heart.  It cut through all of his lies and doubts and the promises that he’d made to himself.  It went straight to the monster and filled it with power.  Bruce held on.  _He held on._

Thankfully, Barton had had enough and put a stop to it.  “This is a waste of time.  He’s crazy.  He doesn’t know anything,” he declared to Natasha.  “Let them lock him up.”

Natasha smoothly cocked an eyebrow, regarding Lahey’s shivering form dispassionately, before holstering her gun again and nodding.  “Maybe there is an answer, doctor.  But you don’t have it.”  She looked to the guards.  “Put this monster back in his cage.”

Bruce was out the door before the guards could move to escort Lahey back to the detention block.  He winced, trying not to hear and trying not to think and trying his damnedest not to _feel_ as Dan’s desperate cries echoed through the room.  “You can’t do this to me!  I came so close!  So close!  Oh, please God…  Please… don’t take me away!  Don’t!  Bruce!  _Bruce!_ ”

Out in the hallway, Dan’s begging was muffled.  A breath later, he was silent.  Bruce leaned against the wall, closing his eyes and breathing deeply and struggling to rise above it all.  The guilt and anger and grief.  The sad, _sad_ fact that Dan, as crazy as he was, was right about him.

“Sorry,” Natasha said softly.  She shared a frustrated, irritated look with Clint.  “I really hoped we could get something useful out of him.”

“Just make sure he never hurts anyone ever again,” Bruce coolly ordered.

“Bruce–”

He was already walking away.

* * *

Bruce couldn’t stop thinking about what Dan had said.  He was someone who tended to dwell.  He knew it and hated it but he really couldn’t stop himself.  He’d never been able to stop himself.  Inevitably his thoughts went to his mistakes, his failings.  His shortcomings.  He poured over them until even the smallest foible seemed monumental and undefeatable.  This bad habit went back to his youth.  He’d always been a quiet and reserved child, but since he’d known so much and so many things came easily to him, he expected perfection out of himself.  And his father’s less than stellar treatment of him had only heightened his own intolerance of himself.  Bruce had always needed to know, needed to be the smartest and wisest and the best.  He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Dan that he had a lot of questions.  There were many things he didn’t understand.  Like how Brian Banner had spent so much of his life trying not to become a monster but, as things often happened, met his fate on the path he’d taken to avoid it.  Bruce had spent his life prizing his intelligence, and his intelligence had turned him into a monster, too.  Had that been his fate?  He didn’t believe in things like God or destiny or that everyone got his just desserts; those things were crutches the weak used to justify the things they did or the things that were done to them.  But that meant there had to be an explanation.  Some scientifically verifiable reason why Steve Rogers had become Captain America, the embodiment of valor, and why Bruce Banner had become the Hulk, the embodiment of rage.

After everything that had happened that day, he didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about his mistakes.

He went back to the ICU only to find that Tony had been moved to a private room.  His feet directed him there of his own accord because his mind had frankly checked out.  He was so damn tired.  He finally found Tony’s room, and he rapped on the door with a knuckle.

Pepper stood from the chair beside the bed, and her beautiful face broke in a relieved smile.  “Bruce,” she said softly.

Bruce grinned lopsidedly at seeing Tony’s glazed eyes settle on him.  “Hey, look who’s awake,” he said, summoning all that remained of his composure.  He needed to put that mask on, the one he wore when he needed to pretend that he was alright.

Stark grunted.  “You’re a sight for sore eyes?  Something like that,” he mumbled.  His face was white and drawn, his eyes ringed in lavender.  He was propped up a bit in the bed with a rolling table pulled closer, one that had a plastic pitcher of ice water and a cup full of it with a straw.  A light blanket covered him to his waist, and a nasal cannula ran under his nose.  There was a StarkPad on the foot of the bed and another under his arm, but he looked like he had given up using it.

Pepper offered that same sweet, disarming smile.  “I don’t think I said it before, and I doubt Tony will–”

“Hey!”

“–but thank you.”  She took Bruce’s hands and squeezed them gently.  Her eyes shone in teary relief.  She hugged him tightly, tucking his head to her shoulder.  “You saved his life.”

He felt better at that, and he couldn’t help but smile, too.  Genuinely.  He felt warm wetness bleed through the shoulder of his shirt, and Pepper trembled in his arms.  “Enough of that,” Tony chastised.  “You’re making Banner nervous.  He hates touchy-feely stuff.”

Pepper pulled away, wiping at her eyes.  She laughed a little.  “Sorry.”

“No, no,” Bruce said, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.  He wasn’t used to people thanking him for saving their loved ones.  It was extremely rewarding, like a soothing balm to his tormented spirit.  He wasn’t really used to getting hugged, either.  And Tony was right: he didn’t much care for personal contact (for obvious reasons), but with Pepper it seemed fairly okay.  “Don’t worry about it.  Been a rough day.”

“Yes.  You two need to talk.  I’ll, uh, just go grab something to eat,” Pepper said.  She gathered her coat from the end of Tony’s bed, leaned over, kissed him gently, and left.

Tony licked his dry lips, drawing a deep breath with a wince.  He planted his hands into the hospital bed weakly and tried to push himself up.  He got about halfway, his face quickly becoming coated in sweat, before he gave up.  “This is crap,” he grumbled.  He looked irritated and flushed and frustrated.  “Remind me never to hang out with your friends again.”

Bruce smiled faintly and lowered himself into Pepper’s chair.  “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.  I’m on the good stuff, so I can’t complain,” Tony said.  Even as pale and weak as he was, Stark looked infinitely better than he had a few hours ago.  There was light in his eyes again.  Bruce knew those horrific moments of Tony bleeding his life into his hands would stay with him for a long time.  “How about you?  How are you feeling?”

Bruce grunted a little in surprise.  He cocked an eyebrow.  “You know, you’re the first person to ask me that.”  That hurt more than he let on.  He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs and clasping his hands together in front of him.  He sighed.  “Shaken.  Beyond that, I don’t know.  You hear about Rogers?”

“Yeah.”  Tony’s expression was unreadable, but his eyes shone in a bit of shame as though he’d been annoyed enough with Steve to actually wish something unfortunate would befall him and now felt immensely guilty about it.  “Is he okay?”

“Seems to be.”

Tony sagged against the pillows in obvious fatigue.  “All’s well that ends well, then,” he declared.  He closed his eyes as though he was drifting off to sleep.  Bruce watched him for a moment, wondering if that was all he was going to say.  If this really was the end.  Maybe it would be, if he could just let it go.

But he couldn’t.  Letting things go wasn’t in his nature, especially when he didn’t understand.  Dan maybe knew him better than he knew himself.

“Whatever guilty thing it is you’re thinking, just stop.”  Bruce had drifted in his thoughts again, and he forced himself to focus on Stark.  Tony’s eyes were still closed.  It was as if he’d somehow known all of Bruce’s dark contemplations, how deeply conflicted and ashamed he felt.  “If you hadn’t done what you did, I would be dead.  Barton, too, probably.  And Rogers definitely.”

“You didn’t see it, Tony,” Bruce quietly reminded.  “You didn’t see what they did to him.”  _What I did to him._

Tony grunted.  “Don’t need to.”  He finally cracked his weary eyes open and appraised Bruce evenly.  Knowingly.  “You’re too hard on yourself.  I can hear you beating yourself up from all the way over here.”

“There’s something fundamentally screwed up about the way I think,” Bruce softly said.  He could hardly keep the hard edge from his voice.  “Dan thought I would help him, and he was right.  I did.  I didn’t have a choice.  I know that.  But I also know myself.  I think deep down I wanted to know if his idea would work.”

“Sure you did,” Tony said sarcastically.  Bruce didn’t feel particularly absolved or comforted.  Offering empty solace wasn’t Stark’s style.  He said things the way they were.  He cut through the nonsense.  He didn’t placate or smooth over riled egos.  He said what someone needed to hear, not what someone wanted to hear.  He was honest, smartly so.  “Coming from one obsessed genius to another, you need to accept that things just go wrong.  And just because something didn’t work doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work.  This is the second time I’ve told you this.  _Listen_ for once.”  Tony shook his head slightly.  “And denying who you are is never a good idea.  That’s how you make your own demons.  And then your house ends up at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.”

Bruce chuckled at that, smiling in exasperation and shaking his head.  “Your house ended up at the bottom of the Pacific because you broadcasted your address to the world’s worst terrorist over live TV.”

“Same difference.  Point is: so what if you wanted to know?  There’s a line between science for science and science for evil, and your buddy crossed it.  You didn’t.  Hell, you can’t even ask Rogers for a blood sample because you’re too afraid of the temptation.”  That was true enough.  “And temptation for what?  Would it be so bad if you found a way to replicate the super soldier serum?  Or to fix your broken tomato plants?  Or even fix yourself?”  Bruce didn’t know.  It didn’t feel good, but Tony was right: the difference between examining a blood sample and forcing a man to participate in an experiment against his will was like the difference between night and day.  He was being overly dramatic, and he knew it, but he couldn’t shake it.  “Look, Bruce, you’re thinking too much about this.  You did what you had to and that’s it.  Knowing Captain Perfect, he won’t hold it against you.  Probably thinks you saved him.  And who’s to say you didn’t.”

Bruce sighed at that.  “No way of knowing,” he said.

That wasn’t entirely true, and they both knew it.

“I’m gonna sleep now.  You’re good?” Tony asked.  His eyelids had grown increasingly droopy.

“Yeah.  Good enough.”

“Alright.  You owe me for this, by the way.”

Bruce smiled.  “I owe you for a lot.”

Tony yawned a ridiculously wide yawn.  “Damn right.”

Bruce sat there for a long while after Tony drifted to sleep.  He was wondering about things, calculations and data and variables, questions that had no answers and questions that shouldn’t be answered.  He knew Stark too well not to see that Tony was enabling him just a little.  They were fundamentally alike in their love of problem-solving.  Figure it out first and judge the ramifications later.  Build it now and decide whether or not it was safe to build after the fact.  Run the experiment right away and digest the consequences afterward.  They pushed buttons to see what they did, and if they blew up in their faces, well, then they knew not to push them again.

Obsession and genius.  Bruce figured it wasn’t a good combination.  But it was who he was, who they both were.

Pepper came back and he left.  His feet carried him elsewhere into the infirmary until he found himself outside the office of Doctor Wright.  Then he hesitated because this was right, but it wasn’t.  It was what he needed to do, but he shouldn’t do it.  _Walk away.  Don’t let it suck you in.  Don’t do it, Banner.  Don’t._

But he did.  He justified it, of course.  If there were answers to be found, he deserved to know them.  Steve deserved to know them, too.  He knocked on the door which was slightly ajar.  “Doctor Wright?”

The man looked up from his desk, papers and tablets strewn everywhere, a computer terminal bathing his face in light.  He looked a bit surprised.  “Doctor Banner, how can I help you?”

“Actually I thought I could help you.  You said you wanted an expert on the serum to look over Captain Rogers’ test results.  I can do that for you.  And if you have any other blood and tissue samples, I’d appreciate getting a hold of them.  I’d like to run my own analyses, if you don’t mind…”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** So… yeah, just because this wasn't dark enough (and because I can't seem to write anything happy – ugh something's wrong with me!), I need to put a teensy warning on this chapter. WARNING: this chapter contains mentions of spousal and child abuse. Nothing is explained in detail. I'm taking a different approach to Steve's backstory in this story, considering that the MCU canon has pretty much ruled out him being an orphan. And since his father obviously came back to the States after World War I, I decided to expand on what that could have been like (and by expand, I mean be evil about it – like I said, something must be wrong with me).
> 
> At any rate, enjoy. And did anyone actually think Steve was going to be okay after what happened to him? Never… ;-).

Steve ended up at Stark Tower.

To say he was pleased with the arrangement would have been a lie and a rather blatant one at that.  Fury had wanted him to stay close, near the SHIELD doctors and researchers in the event something serious happened to him ( _nothing_ was wrong, but no matter how many times he said it, nobody believed him).  That meant staying at SHIELD headquarters in Times Square, which would have been okay though perhaps not ideal, but when Pepper Potts caught wind of him spending the foreseeable future alone in the barracks, she’d suggested that he come back with them to the Tower.  She’d been shaken by what had happened to Tony, deeply so, and Steve could see why.  It was obvious she loved Stark deeply and that he loved her, and she was extremely grateful for everything Bruce and Steve had done to save Tony’s life.  Steve had tried to politely argue, embarrassed with the open display of appreciation.  He didn’t like taking other people’s charity and never had, even when he’d been a scrawny, skinny kid and poorer than dirt during the Depression in Brooklyn.  However, she’d been incredibly persuasive, deflecting all of his excuses, piling reason upon reason on him why staying with them was a good idea.  He’d be close to Doctor Banner, just in case something _did_ happen (although with each passing day since his ordeal in which nothing happened, that seemed more and more unlikely).  He wouldn’t be alone if he needed something or someone (which was laughable – he was Captain America and was more than capable of taking care of himself).  And it was the least she and Stark could do, given what Steve had done for them (that he wanted to argue against, but he couldn’t make himself at seeing the raw affection for him and the ardent desire to help in Pepper’s eyes).  Tony hadn’t agreed, of course, but had wisely chosen to remain silent while Pepper had coaxed and cajoled and finally flat-out insisted.

And Fury had agreed.  That had pretty put the nail in the coffin.

So Pepper had given him an _entire floor_ (his new bedroom was bigger than the whole of his apartment in DC), complete with his own kitchen, den, dining area, lounge, and a bathroom that had more fancy features than he knew existed.  He hadn’t wanted all that space and all the expensive things in it, fancy artwork and sleek furniture and state-of-the-art technology, but she had laughed off his concerns.  She told Tony’s AI, JARVIS, to help him with whatever he needed, and JARVIS had politely greeted him, proclaiming he was available to render him any assistance he required.  She had even had one of her assistants go out and buy him an entire wardrobe full of brand new clothes (expensive clothes, at that – Steve didn’t know anything about modern fashion, but he could tell these things cost far more than he’d normally spend).  They were sensible, though, relaxed jeans and khaki slacks and polo and button down shirts and simple jackets.  Sneakers and running shoes.  And it was necessary since he didn’t have any of his things here, even if he’d flushed at her generosity when he found his closet and drawers were completely stocked.

And he had everything he could have wanted at his disposal.  One of the things he found so jarring about life in the twenty-first century was the immediacy of everything.  Entertainment ( _any_ entertainment from music to movies to television shows) was instantly available with a press of a button or a simple word.  Books could be purchased digitally and downloaded to any number of personal computing devices.  Printed newspapers were rapidly becoming a thing of the past; why mess with that when one could use a phone to get breaking news delivered nearly the minute it happened?  Food of all sorts from all over the world was available with a simple call.  People could hop on a plane or a train or in a car and get anywhere, see anybody, at the drop of a hat.  Friends could be on the other side of the globe and you could talk to them, even see them, like they were right in front of you.  The world moved so quickly, a buzz of excitement and social media and electronic facilitation.

However, for all of that, for this life of luxury and plenty at his fingertips, he was lonely and utterly bored.  Time was leaking away at a snail’s pace.  The minute Clint’s shoulder had recovered enough for him to work, Fury had dispatched him and Romanoff to Turkey.  Their mission was to attempt to track down some of the mercenaries who’d helped in Lahey’s plot.  The hope was that tracing contacts and money from these men might lead them back to whoever had arranged this whole nightmare in the first place, since pressing Lahey had apparently proved futile.  If nothing else, they could gather better intel on what sort of threat these hired guns posed and maybe even take a few of them out.  Clint had stopped by the Tower a couple days into Steve’s stay to tell him all of this, the guilt and frustration bright in his eyes.  This was normally the sort of mission they’d do together.  Steve had swallowed his own irritation for his friend’s sake, brushing it aside and jokingly telling him to be careful.  Clint had just taken his advice for once and nodded and promised to stay in touch as much as possible.  Steve hadn’t heard from him since.  That wasn’t unusual or even worrying; quite often operations such as this required strict communications silence, and even if this one didn’t, there wasn’t always the opportunity to call.  But being cut off from Clint wasn’t helping with the isolation.

Tony was still recovering from his injury so he spent most of his time in his bedroom up in the penthouse.  Steve had seen Stark once or twice, the inventor pale and frustrated at being laid up, irately watching television or bickering with JARVIS or Pepper or whoever happened to be around him.  Stark and he had even shared a meal (accidentally of course – they’d both ended up at the breakfast table together after Pepper had invited Steve to eat with them and then conveniently left due to a sudden “business” matter).  He didn’t really know Stark, and Stark didn’t really know him, and they weren’t comfortable enough around each other to do much more than eat in silence (and Tony nearly dying with Steve’s hand wrist-deep in his stomach?  Not going there.).  Steve liked to think Tony wasn’t doing it on purpose, but he got the impression that he wasn’t entirely welcome and that he had never had been.  Stark seemed a changed man since the Mandarin incident, softer and more compassionate, more responsible.  Calmer.  More at peace with himself.  Steve didn’t know the whole of what had happened, but he wasn’t about to ask.  He respected Tony, but Tony didn’t seem keen on wanting him as his friend, and Steve wasn’t sure he wanted to be.  That tangled knot of things between them was only more tangled now.  They unnerved and aggravated one another without Pepper there to smooth over the rough edges.  And Pepper was gone from morning until night most days, incredibly busy with the myriad tasks, duties, and stresses of running Stark Industries.  She was like a beautiful whirlwind, rushing through each day without a moment to stop to even think but doing it with such grace and aplomb that she made it look easy.  Steve didn’t know how she could stand to live like that, multi-tasking so feverishly, balancing the needs of her career with the needs of the man she loved with whatever desires she had left for herself.  Steve felt exhausted just observing from the sidelines.

And Banner was around, holed up in any one of the Tower’s many labs or on his own floor.  Steve knew he was present; he’d run into the other man on occasion in one of the common rooms, the kitchen or the lounge usually, but aside from brief exchanges that barely consisted of more than a genial “how are you” and a pleasant “I’m fine.  You?”, they hardly talked.  Bruce was avoiding him like the plague.  Steve could understand that.  Banner hadn’t done anything wrong, really, even if he felt like he did.  There hadn’t been a choice, and if Bruce hadn’t followed Lahey’s instructions, they all could have been killed.  But Steve knew well the whims of guilt, of feeling like he’d let someone down, of knowing that his mistakes had cost lives and hurt a friend.  _Killed_ a friend.  And he kept thinking he should tell Bruce it was okay, that he was _okay_ , and none of this was or had been or ever would be his fault.  But Banner always retreated before Steve summoned the courage to address all this unresolved tension, and, more than that, he found it wasn’t as easy to say it as it was to think it.  Even if he was trying his damnedest to act like this was all nothing, it wasn’t.  Some part of him was angry, frightened, _violated_ in a way that went deep.  Those things weren’t rational.  He smothered them in apathy, ignoring them, but they were still there.  SHIELD had suggested to him that he should see one of their psychiatrists to deal with the trauma of what had happened to him, but he hadn’t yet.  He didn’t know if he would.  They’d helped somewhat after he’d woken from the ice, but the shock of that had been so enormous and he’d been so lost that he really hadn’t had a choice but to see them.  Now…  It was easier to just pretend nothing had happened, that this was all going to blow over.  Fury would realize he was fine and let him back out in the field and life would go back to the way it had been.

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be soon in coming.  Days passed lethargically.  Steve spent most of them alone in his suite, trapped despite the spaciousness of his accommodations.  Caged.  He was trying to stay patient and numb to it all, focusing on writing the reports Hill had requested about the incident with a level of cool detachment and professionalism that even he found alarming.  It was so quiet that all he could do was think.  Back a few weeks after the Battle of New York, one of the psychiatrists had asked him how was feeling, how he was _adjusting_ , and Steve had simply said it was fine because that was all there was to it.  _“It is what it is.  I’m here now for better or for worse.  I’ll do what I can do to help.”_

She had smiled knowingly.  Sadly.  _“You know, Captain Rogers, it is possible to be too good of a soldier.”_

Steve hadn’t understood but had been hurt by that all the same.  _“What do you mean?”_

_“No matter how hard you get knocked down, you always get back up.  Without another thought you always fight on.”_

_“Of course.”_   Was he supposed to do something else?  _“What are you saying?  I shouldn’t keep going?  I should throw in the towel and give up?  So what if I lost everything?  I can start over, right?”_   Was he looking for her permission?

 _“No.  No, that’s not it at all.”_   She kept smiling that sad smile.  _“All I’m saying is it’s okay to stop for a minute and feel, to let things hurt.  To get help.  To remember what you lost and what you went through.  It’s healthy to grieve, to acknowledge pain.  It’s not weakness.”_

_“I know it’s not.  It’s just…  If you start crying because it hurts, pretty soon you can’t stop.  And then you can’t get back up.  It’s best to just let it go and keep going.”_

_“Who taught you that?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

_“Well, whoever it was did you a disservice.”_   She’d leaned forward, watching him with compassionate eyes.  _“You can take the hits, Captain.  And I think that’s part of your problem.  You can take the hits, suffer through the pain, and get back up like it was nothing.  You can lose everything and pick up your shield and go back out there and save the world.  You can_ do _these things, so you do them without a second thought because you’ve been taught by the army and by the times that you grew up in and by the people in your life that that was what good soldiers did.  What good men did.”_

 _“That’s what Captain America does,”_ he’d insisted.

She had conceded that.  _“Yes.  But you’re not Captain America.  You’re Steve Rogers.”_

 _“I’m not sure I follow,”_ he’d said, _“or that there’s a difference.”_

 _“There is.  Captain America is invincible.  Steve Rogers isn’t.  You’ve been hurt.  And you can try to tell yourself that it’s alright, but eventually that’s not going to last you.  And all these wounds that you just took or ignored or buried or let go will have their due.”_ That had been frightening but he couldn’t say why.  It wasn’t who he was.  He never let things get to him. _“Let me ask you this: do you ever get angry?”_

_“Of course I do.  But I don’t let it control me.”_

_“You must be angry about what you lost.  It’s only been a few weeks since they found you.  Doesn’t it bother you that Director Fury just expected you to pick yourself back up and do your job like everything that happened to you was nothing?  They used you, Captain.  They thawed you, gave you a computer and a book on the 21 st century, and told you they needed you to lead the Avengers in a war.  Did anybody ask you if you wanted to?”_

_“Yes, they asked.  And the world was in danger.  What was I supposed to do?  Sit back and watch?”_

She had pressed on.  _“Did anybody ask_ you _?  Or did they ask Captain America?”_   Steve had gritted his teeth.  Why had he bothered coming to these sessions?  If Fury hadn’t told him to…  _“Because Captain America soldiers on.  Captain America doesn’t get hurt.  But you do.  You needed time, and they didn’t care.  That has to make you angry.”_

Steve had sighed.  _“Yes.  But what does it matter?  Getting angry never helps.  All it does is make things harder, for you and for everyone else.”_

 _“You’re right, but it’s a natural reaction.  Anger is natural.  It’s healthy, even.  You’ve gone through a tremendous shock, the trauma of fighting a war right before it notwithstanding.  I tell a lot of agents who see me that compartmentalizing is all well and good to get you through the mission, but it’s not a long-term solution.  Eventually you have to deal with your anger_ and _your pain, with however it is you’re feeling.”_

_“I’m not compart – I’m not doing that.  I’m just trying to do what I need to do.”_

_“I know, and you’re doing an amazing job.  Nobody can fault that.  But it’s just a little too amazing, a little too stoic.  You’re too good of a soldier.”_   Steve had looked away, feeling the uncomfortable burn of tears in his eyes.  They’d woken him up, asked him to adjust to a world in which everyone he’d loved was dead or dying, a world in which he had no place, and he had.  He’d even put on his uniform and picked up his shield and fought a war on behalf of people he didn’t know.  _He’d done it._ He’d done it without complaint, without waver, without doubt or fear.And now he was doing it too well?  She’d sensed his distress.  _“I’m not trying to upset you, Captain.  We have these sessions–”_

_“With all due respect, I didn’t ask to come.  I’m following orders.”_

She had smiled thinly, as though he’d just furthered her argument without him realizing it.  He realized it.  Too damn good of a soldier.  _“The point is you tell me about how you’re feeling, how you’re doing, but I think you’re just telling me – and telling yourself – what you want to hear.  You can’t make yourself be happy any more than you can wish away what makes you sad or ignore what makes you angry.  The serum helps you heal your body.  But it can’t help you heal your soul.  It’s okay to admit that you’re hurt.  It’s okay to be mad and it’s okay to cry.  It’s okay not to be okay.”_

 _“I appreciate that you’re worried and I appreciate that you want to help me.  But I don’t need help.  I_ am _okay.”_

He’d lied about that.  And he was lying about it again.  He wasn’t okay.  Well, in some ways he was, in all the ways that mattered, but he wasn’t, too.  He believed he could be, that he would be.  As time passed, the memories would lose their sharpness.  It would stop hurting.  It always did.  The feel of the restraints on his wrists and ankles, restraints he could have snapped like _nothing_ if there hadn’t been a gun to Clint’s head right outside the chamber.  Straps cutting into his skin.  The cold metal table to his bare back.  Naked and exposed with men crowding all around him, touching him dispassionately.  Pain as something icy and sharp stabbed into his skin, into his head, into his spine.  Fire burning in his body, spreading up his back and into his brain.  Every nerve wracking with agony, a vicious, acidic agony that burned his whole world away…

It could all disappear, blurred into a nondescript nightmare, if he just let it go.  So he let it go.  He wrote his reports.  He tore through about a dozen books, letting JARVIS select novels for him (the AI did a surprisingly good job finding things that were interesting).  He jogged around the city a couple of times a day and worked out in Stark’s ridiculously huge and expensive gym listening to the long list of music he’d been recommended by the various people in his life.  He watched TV; Tony apparently owned about every movie ever made, so it took him almost as much time to sort through it all to find something worth watching as it did to watch it.  He slept a lot, which was unusual for him, but the SHIELD doctors had mentioned that radiation sickness could amount to some serious lethargy as the serum tried to revitalize his body.  He wandered around the city, found his way to an art store and bought some pencils and books.  He sketched.  He’d never had so much free time, at least not since joining the army for Project: Rebirth.  He almost didn’t know what to do with himself.  He kept trying to get a hold of Hill or Sitwell, _anybody_ who could put him in contact with Fury, but everyone just told him to be patient, to rest and recover, to even _enjoy_ his time off.  It was really ridiculous.  He was fine.  He was healthy, as strong and resilient and capable as he ever had been.  And the bad memories would fade.  _He was fine._

But then the nightmares started.

And the migraines.

Stressful dreams weren’t anything new to him; he had more than his fair share, the ghosts of Peggy and Bucky and Howard dancing through his subconscious.  Since the serum, he remembered his dreams where he never used to, but these were… different.  Vivid in a way that was uncanny.  So acutely _alive_ that it was terrifying.  Rich in sight and sound and taste.  Peggy’s lips soft to his own.  Bucky’s voice and the strength of his smile.  The stench of Dum Dum’s cigar, the sound of Falsworth sharply yelling, the sight of Dernier and Jones laughing together, the feel of Morita clapping him on the back as beer splashed onto his service uniform.  He went to sleep in foxholes and trenches and tents, Bucky and the Howling Commandos snoring beside him, and awoke alone in his huge bed in Stark Tower, confused at how the positively real sensation of hard ground beneath him and the fresh smell of pine needles had turned into a mattress that was too soft and air that was recycled and artificially cooled.  These pleasant memories were one thing.  They left him gasping in grief, wiping at his eyes, struggling for a moment to compose himself and _move on_.  Still, he did and went through his day unbothered.  But the bad memories…  Those hit him like a freight train, sending him stumbling to the bathroom to throw up, leaving him shaking in phantom agony and fear that was raw and visceral, stripping him bare of his strength and courage.  His grasp on reality shifted violently in those awful minutes where sleep meshed with wakefulness, the sounds of bombs flying and bodies breaking and men screaming seemingly echoing through the Tower until he realized they were only echoing in his head.  There were aliens shrieking and buildings collapsing and demons in his mind that destroyed New York and murdered the Avengers.  A red skull sneering and ice and cold.  _So much cold._   This was like nothing he’d experienced before.  When the first dreams had come about a week into his stay in Stark Tower, he’d been left reeling but he’d shaken them off, figuring it was from stress.  But days later, he was worrying it wasn’t.

And the headaches were overpowering.  They, too, started out simple enough, a dull ache in his neck that bothered him for a couple of days.  A nuisance, really.  Then it grew into a throbbing pain in the base of his skull.  And now it had morphed into a monster, this shooting misery that reached across his entire head like spikes of liquid steel were snaking through his brain, burning and then hardening.  It was torturing him.  Everything exacerbated it.  Loud noises.  Bright lights.  Movement.  There wasn’t any way to alleviate it except sleeping (he’d even tried painkillers, desperate enough to entertain the crazy thought they would help, but they didn’t of course), and he was trying to avoid sleeping as much as possible because the nightmares were becoming more violent and more perverted and completely unbearable.  He’d gone without sleep before, and since Project: Rebirth, he required much less of it than a normal man did.  But the pain from the migraines grew so bad that he succumbed, and the nightmares were so bad that he woke in anguish, heaving and hurting and wondering what the hell was happening to him.  It was a vicious cycle.  He started dreaming about things he hadn’t even _thought_ about in years.  His mother.  His father.  It was almost like something was rifling through his brain, finding all these repressed or long-forgotten memories and yanking them to the surface and into the light.  It was almost as if his mind was on over-drive, electrified and jolted into hyperactivity, remembering and imagining with alarming speed and power.  He started to admit to himself that something was wrong.

Of course, he rationalized it like he did everything.  Maybe this was all a side-effect of radiation exposure.  He’d _died_ after all; even if he didn’t consciously remember that, the trauma done to his body and mind had surely been substantial enough to cause these new strange and disconcerting issues.  Obviously the serum could produce unexpected effects, his long hibernation in the _Valkyrie_ proof enough of that.  Maybe this was a response to how badly he’d been hurt, how much effort his body was putting into recovering.  Maybe.  He knew he should call someone, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it because he was afraid.  Admitting something might be wrong was one thing, but actively seeking to correct it was another because that would make it real.  That would mean people testing him, measuring him, examining him and looking for answers.  That would mean Lahey had really _done_ something to him that he couldn’t just shake off.  So he convinced himself that this would pass tomorrow or the day after.

Two weeks into his exile in the Tower, it had only gotten worse.  He stood in his bathroom, leaning into the smooth, polished stone vanity that went on for miles, watching the water run down from the shiny silver faucet into the equally shiny sink.  Another night of dreams had passed, dreams of his tiny apartment in Brooklyn, dreams of dark things he hadn’t acknowledged in forever.  They had been harsh and cruel and twisted and he was having a hard time shaking them.  And those dreams hadn’t been the worst of them.  Bucky falling from the train.  Tony falling from the sky.  Peggy worn and withered in a hospital, dying before his eyes.  Dying in his arms.  His mother dying in his arms, too.  Angry eyes blaming him.  Dead soldiers, _his men_ , butchered and bloody and rising from scorched and torn battlefields to blame him.  The Commandos lost, tortured, experimented on.  Bucky’s skin waxy and burned, his eyes brimming with fury and agony and accusation, as shadowy men advanced on them both with needles and knives and horrible things.  Dan Lahey had done this to him because Arnim Zola had done it to Bucky and _he hadn’t stopped him_.

He felt so thoroughly worn, worn and weak.  Why was he dreaming of these things?  Why?

He drew a deep breath to calm his rattled nerves and cupped his hands under the flow of cold water and splashed it to his face.  That immediately took him to his last minutes in Schmidt’s plane, the wide expanse of ice and snow rushing up to meet him, slamming through the cockpit and invading his broken body and freezing him alive _._   The memory held fast, so incredibly real, more real now than it ever had been before.  It let him go when he died, and suddenly he was back in the bathroom, staring at that damn shiny sink with his hands clenched around the vanity and not the arms of the pilot’s chair.  Steve choked on half a sob, squeezing the granite counter until the stone cracked.  When he caught his breath and opened eyes he’d squeezed shut, he saw the water running down the drain was mixed with red.  It took his overwhelmed mind a moment to realize it was blood, blood dripping from his nose.  Steve wiped his lip, staring at the red covering his fingers in muted alarm.  He hadn’t had a nosebleed since before the serum.  He forced himself to breathe slowly, feeling nauseous.  At least the headache wasn’t quite so skull-splitting as it normally was.  He looked back at the mirror, at his pale, drawn face and red eyes and the blood.  Detachment.  It wasn’t real, and he wasn’t suffering.  He couldn’t be suffering because none of it was real.

He wiped the blood away and took a shower.  He got dressed, brushed his teeth and combed his hair and made himself look calm and presentable.  He was numb enough to soldier on.

He emerged from the silence of his room, feeling decent.  JARVIS asked him yet again if he was alright, if he required any assistance; the AI had surely noticed his distress these last nights, though he hadn’t directly commented on it.  Steve brushed aside JARVIS’ concerns, grabbing his sketchpad and heading toward the main kitchen a few floors down to find some coffee.  When he got there, he brewed a pot (he never imagined something so simple as making coffee could be so technologically complicated).  Caffeine affected him about as much alcohol, which was to say not at all, but at least it had a pleasant placebo effect.  He thought about eating something, but he didn’t think his yet roiling stomach could take it.  So he took his steaming cup and sat at the breakfast bar across from the huge windows and watched the sun rise.

He was well into his third sketch, his mind blissfully blank and lulled by the familiar, _safe_ concentration of drawing, by the time he heard someone walking down the hallway outside.  The scratch of his pencil against the paper had been so loud in the heavy silence.  He paused and looked up to find Pepper entering the kitchen wearing a simple pair of jeans and a white, sleeveless blouse.  She had a bright smile on her face, but it immediately fell.  “Steve, you look awful.  Are you alright?”

He’d hoped it wouldn’t be so obvious.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I’m fine.  Just not sleeping so great.”

She didn’t seem convinced, and he hoped that his voice didn’t sound as rough and strained to her as it did to him.  She went to the expansive cupboards and grabbed a coffee cup.  “I suppose you have a good reason not to,” she said.  She poured herself some coffee, loaded it with cream and sugar, and made her way toward the breakfast bar.  “Mind if I sit with you?”

He didn’t feel like talking.  Despite his relative isolation and loneliness, the thought of engaging in chit chat (or worse, a conversation with actual substance) with anyone right then was decidedly unappealing.  But this was her home, and he was her guest.  He couldn’t be rude.  “Of course not, Miss Potts.”

“I already told you to call me Pepper,” she softly chided, sliding onto one of the stools beside him.  “Numerous times, I think.”

“Sorry,” he said with half a smile.  “Old habits.”

She was tense; he could practically feel it.  They sat in a not quite comfortable silence for a few seconds.  “If you want to talk, I’m more than happy to listen.  I know that sounds cheesy and we don’t really know each other, but…”

Steve winced.  “I appreciate that, but it’s okay.  I don’t want to trouble you.”  Troubling her was a concern, but not his chief one.  The stuff he was dreaming was so… dark and violent.  He didn’t want to even go near it, let alone spread it to anyone else.

She sighed, curling her slender fingers around the white porcelain of her mug.  She looked like she was debating whether or not to say something, but she cocked her head and decided to be bold.  “You might find this hard to believe, but I understand what you’re going through.  When Killian kidnapped me…  Well, Tony gave SHIELD his report.  Did you read it?”

“Not entirely.”

“They injected me with Extremis to force Tony to cooperate.”  Steve had known that.  It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that Pepper was right: she could understand what it was like.  She looked nervous.  “It was… beyond a doubt the single most painful, terrifying, and degrading experience of my life.  I still have nightmares.  I think I always will.”

“Miss Potts–”  She gave him a look.  “Pepper,” he corrected himself.  “Listen, you don’t have to tell me–”

“I won’t,” she promised.  “I’m not going to, not unless you want to talk.”  She winced at her own words, but he was moved by the depth of what she was offering him.  “And if it’s bothering you to the point where you can’t sleep, maybe you should talk to Bruce.”

Steve prayed the wave of tension that rolled over him wasn’t noticeable.  “He’s not that kind of doctor,” he reminded.  “And there isn’t anything he can do.”

Pepper smiled softly.  “He might still be able to help.  I know that Tony seems to get a lot of comfort out of talking to him.”  Steve didn’t know if she just wasn’t aware of the tension between him and Bruce and how utterly impossible what she was suggesting was.  Maybe she did know and this was her subtle way of trying to fix the problem.  In either case, Steve didn’t see how admitting to Bruce that this was affecting him would solve anything.  He didn’t want to amplify Bruce’s guilt.  And he frankly didn’t want Bruce involved.  He knew he should be better than this, but he was so raw that he could only think about that radiation killing him and the hand that had wielded it.  “How are you feeling otherwise?”

Steve sighed a little and managed a small grin for her sake.  “Alright.  Stir crazy.”

Pepper sipped her coffee.  “No word from SHIELD yet?  If – well, if you can talk about… that.”

He couldn’t help but smile.  “I can talk about it.  And no.”  He was almost starting to not care about SHIELD and his forced R&R.  The headache was coming back.  It was a fairly random thing, and he wasn’t sure what was triggering it.  All he knew was once it got going, it stampeded over him.  He swallowed thickly.  “How’s Tony doing?”

Pepper smiled in a way that seemed just a tad tormented and exasperated.  “He’s alright.  Back on his feet and generally feeling better, but that’s not always a good thing with him.  I’m not sure which is worse: Tony bored to tears or Tony obsessively working to get his mind off of things.  Babysitting him is a full-time job, even more so than babysitting his company.”  Her smile turned sheepish.  “But you don’t need to listen to me complain.”

“It’s fine,” Steve reflexively said.  God, his head hurt…

“Who’s that?”

He didn’t know if he’d lost track of the conversation for a minute, blanked out for just a second or something odd like that, because he couldn’t figure out to whom she was referring.  “Huh?  Oh.  Oh, that’s not…”

She was looking at his drawing.  It wasn’t finished, and in some places the shading wasn’t right.  Pepper was surprised.  “I didn’t know you were an artist,” she said.  “A good one.  Wow.”

“It’s nothing, and I’m not really.”

“Did you draw that from memory?”

Steve nodded and tapped his pencil to his temple.  “Photographic, thanks to the serum.”

“Wow.  I can’t even remember what _I_ look like most days.”  Pepper smiled coyly at him.  “She’s beautiful.  Who is she?  An old flame?”

Steve couldn’t help but blush and laugh a little.  The question stirred the mess of emotions in his heart, and not in a good way.  But he couldn’t be angry at Pepper for asking.  “No, nothing like that.  She’s my mother.”

Pepper’s face paled and her eyes widened in horror.  “Oh, I’m sorry, Steve.  I didn’t mean…  But I guess it was stupid to even ask.”

“It’s alright.  She died a long time ago.  Well, a long time even for me.”  He looked down at his picture, his eyes glazing with the memory.  The scene in his head was _new_.  He must have completely forgotten it over the years.  He realized immediately that he hadn’t imagined it, but the fact that it had come to him, so fresh and vivid, was puzzling.  His mother was standing against the fire escape of their old apartment building.  He could still hear the sound of her voice when she called him to dinner.  He’d been too busy to care, running wild with Bucky in the dirty street as they pretended to be soldiers, the summer evening hot and humid and sweat clinging to his skin.  For once he could almost keep up.  For once his asthma had let him alone.  And she’d seen that and let him alone, too.  Even as his father had found her there and yelled at her that their supper was getting cold.

He couldn’t have been more than five years old, but somehow this seemed like it had just happened, bright and colorful.  He didn’t know from where the memory had come, or why he was remembering it now, but he was.  It made him sad and happy at the same time.  “She worked hard.  She had to in order to keep us going back then.  My father wasn’t doing very well.  He came back from the war all scarred and burned, and he hated the world for it.”  At Pepper’s questioning glance, he elaborated.  “Mustard gas.”

“He didn’t die from that?”

“Not right away,” Steve explained.  “Not for years.  It messed up his lungs pretty badly, so bad he really couldn’t work anymore.  It was hard on my mother, taking care of the both of us, me with my asthma and him with his problems.  He died when I was eight.”  _Old enough to know he was a bastard sometimes.  A lot of the time._   That was what Bucky had thought.  It was what Buck’s mother, a stern, portly, but loving woman had thought, too.  They’d noticed the occasional black eye or bruised jaw, or that sometimes Steve couldn’t play right because his ribs were tender and couldn’t sit right because his rear was covered in welts.  _A goddamn good-for-nothing Irish bastard._   That was what Mrs. Barnes had called Steve’s father while she’d iced up Steve’s oozing nose once.  Steve had been beaten up so much and so often that it had been hard to tell which bumps and bruises came from his father and which came from the neighborhood and schoolyard bullies, but she had always assumed they had _all_ come from his father.  Steve had taken the abuse (at the time, he hadn’t even realized that was what it was – it had just been the way things were).  He considered himself lucky because as angry as Joseph Rogers had been that he’d come home to find his son had been born sick and small and weak, he was angrier that he’d come home to find himself ruined in every sense of the word.  Financially and physically and emotionally and spiritually.  And he had taken most of his anger and resentment out on his wife.

Steve’s mother had been soft-spoken and calm, a pale, blond woman with a comely face and delicate features.  She had stood between her husband and her son as much as possible, guarding Steve from the violence, trying her hardest to fix the situation even when it had been beyond repair.  She had never complained because she still loved the man she’d married and continued to love him long after pneumonia had finally taken him.  Steve hadn’t been able to understand that, as young as he’d been, how she could have still felt so much for a man who’d terrorized her.  He figured his father couldn’t have always been that way, though he had no memories of who he had been before the war.  But his mother had had memories, wonderful memories to which she had clung.  She had been so sweet and kind, soft smiles and gentle touches, that she couldn’t have fallen in love with someone so harsh and cruel and twisted.  Some nights he had heard them through the thin walls of their apartment, talking like lovers, like a husband and wife even though a slight mistake on her part might have ended up with him belting her just a few hours earlier.  She had been endlessly patient and endlessly calm, endlessly resilient for all their sakes, though sometimes she had cried.  She had always held Steve when she did.  _“Don’t cry, baby.”_ Her tears had soaked his floppy hair, and she clutched him to her chest and shushed him even though she had been the one who couldn’t stop.  _“Don’t cry.  Don’t let it hurt you.  He’s just mad.  He didn’t mean it.”_ He had never meant it.  “ _You just keep getting back up.  We both just have to keep getting back up.”_

His psychiatrist had wanted to know where he’d learned to keep taking it.  He’d learned it from her, but she hadn’t done him _any_ disservice.  He’d learned the value of strength from her, of courage and determination.  And he’d learned the power of anger from his father, that despair and hurt could turn a good man into a bad one.  He’d learned how to temper fury with compassion, how to be understanding, how important it was to protect those he loved and those who were weak.  How to stand back up and keep going and pretend for the sake of others that things didn’t hurt nearly as bad as they did.  He knew what the psychiatrist would have said if he’d told her about it.  His mother had been delusional, blinded to her husband’s faults, rationalizing her own suffering.  She’d been a victim.  He didn’t see her (or want to remember her) that way.  She’d been a warrior in his eyes, a beautiful, bruised warrior with callused, over-worked hands and weary, veiled eyes and an endless supply of love.  She’d been stalwart and graceful.  She had watched pain and rage destroy the man she’d loved.  She had watched it eat away at his soul, rot the good things about him until they were ash and mud, bleed out his kindness and loyalty and affection until there was nothing left in his heart but hate.  And she had _never_ let that poison bring her down.

“Steve?”  Pepper’s concerned voice drew him from his thoughts.  He focused on her, though it was harder than it should have been.  “You okay?”

He didn’t know why all of this was coming up.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Just thinking about things I haven’t thought about in a while.”  Bucky had always told him he was too serious, too dramatic.  Too prone to over-analyzing things and taking things to heart.  So had Peggy.  And so did Clint.  But none of them was there to stop him.  “I’ve had too much time to stew, I guess, being so cooped up.”

“I didn’t know Captain America was capable of brooding,” Pepper teased lightly.

Steve smiled in spite of himself.  He looked over his drawing of his mother again, feeling like it wasn’t quite right but not knowing exactly what to change.  He closed his sketchbook.  “Captain America can brood,” he admitted.  “Sometimes too much for his own good.”

“It’s my fault you’ve been stuck here,” she said.  “I pressured you into staying and left you to fend for yourself.”

“It’s alright.  I should be thanking you for taking me in.”

“You already did.  And, no, it’s not alright.”  She looked at him squarely.  “Let me make it up to you.  If you like art, there’s an Andy Warhol exhibit at the Met.  It’s supposed to be fantastic.  I’ll take you.”

Steve flushed with nervousness.  He didn’t think he could do that.  Not with his migraine pounding and as fatigued as he was.  And then he thought this was pretty damn sad and ridiculous and pathetic; if he was concerned about something so mundane and simple as an outing with a newfound friend, how the hell could he convince Fury that he was fit to return to active duty?  And, more importantly, why wasn’t he _getting help?_   “You don’t need to do that.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

“What about Tony?”

“Please.”  She rolled her eyes.  “He and Bruce are tinkering and inventing and reinforcing each other’s obsessions.  I’ll be lucky if I see him again this week.”  She smiled prettily at him, grabbing his arm and pulling.  “Come on, it’ll be fun.  I’ll even buy you lunch.”

Steve wanted to decline.  But he didn’t.  “Okay.”

* * *

As it turned out, going out wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared it would be.  Stepping out into the Saturday morning sunlight felt _good_ , like the brightness was blasting away his troubles, and he almost instantly felt better.  The fresh air did wonders, revitalizing his battered heart, and being among people was consoling.  He hadn’t realized how truly isolated he’d let himself become, and he wondered immediately if all of this, the nightmares and memories and headaches, wasn’t just some manifestation of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (which his psychiatrist had told him he had, but he’d ignored it because it didn’t seem possible to label what had happened to him with something so neat and simple and easy).  But whatever the case, he felt good, _normal_ , for the first time since he and Clint had left to meet up with Tony and Bruce before driving to Lahey’s lab.

Pepper met him outside, having grabbed her purse and called for a company car.  They drove to the Met (which was fairly silly – it was only a fifteen minute walk), and most of that time Pepper spent on the phone.  She looked exasperated and embarrassed and sounded like she was trying to get whoever had bothered her to stop talking.  She finally hung up and shook her head and turned her phone off.  “Sorry.  There are no such things as weekends when you run a company.”

Steve smiled.  He’d never been in a car this nice before.  “I can only imagine.”

“So what sort of art do you like?”

They chatted about that the rest of the ride and well into arriving at the museum.  Steve was always a tad concerned he’d be recognized out in public.  He knew the Smithsonian in DC was planning some sort of exhibit on Captain America; they’d contacted him about it a few weeks ago when he’d last been home.  He hadn’t been entirely comfortable with the idea because he’d never been entirely comfortable with the fame that came with the shield, with the adoration and reverence, with the notoriety.  He hadn’t become Captain America to be a celebrity or a legend or even a hero.  He’d done it to help people and stop evil, but even back during the war the army and the US government had turned him into this symbol of American purity and power, this endless source of propaganda.  And since saving the city, his face had been plastered on countless TV screens, cell phones, and computers as the indispensable leader of the Avengers, and his fame had skyrocketed.  Stark seemed to flourish with the attention, but Steve could do without it.

Thankfully, dressed as he was in simple Dockers and a blue polo shirt and sneakers, nobody noticed him.  And nobody noticed Pepper, either.  They walked through the museum.  It was nice, honestly, and fun, and the tension left him as he started to enjoy himself.  He’d been to the Met many times before but not since he’d been lost.  Back when they’d been kids, he had dragged Bucky numerous times because this place, with its huge hallways and countless treasures, had inspired his love of art.  Bucky couldn’t have cared less, but he had always pretended for Steve’s sake.  It was a little strange because so much of it was the same yet things were radically different, too.  Much like _everything_ in the future.  As much as he’d caught up with the times, there were still a lot of things he didn’t know and didn’t understand.  He learned as he had the occasion to (which wasn’t often with how busy he was with SHIELD).  It was interesting to discover that Warhol had a childhood not dissimilar from his own.  Son of immigrants.  Sick.  Raised in tough times.  He’d never had a chance to really look at Warhol’s work before.  It was extraordinary.

They wandered around the museum for a couple more hours, visiting other exhibits as well, talking about art.  Pepper complained that Tony had no taste and bought art just to own it, which seemed completely within character for him, and that he had a veritable treasure trove of priceless pieces in storage collecting dust.  She wasn’t even sure if Stark knew what he had.  That seemed within character for him, too.  They wove their way through families and visitors and tourists, enjoying each other’s company, and before long it was lunch time.   Pepper summoned their car, and she took him to a place that served gourmet American fare (thirty dollars for a hamburger?  Steve could hardly believe his eyes).  It was delicious he had to admit, probably the best burger he’d ever had.  After that, they walked to Central Park and roamed the paths.  Steve bought them ice cream, and they strolled in the pleasant summer afternoon.  Pepper laughed and smiled.  She was easy to talk to, so he did.  She asked about what it was like to grow up during the Depression, so he told her.  She asked about the war, so he explained (leaving out the bad parts, of course).  And then she asked about Tony’s father.

“He was a good man,” Steve said once he finally figured out how to answer.  He wasn’t sure it was his place (or that he even wanted) to offer his opinion on something so personal.  Pepper pushed her auburn hair behind her ear as the wind brushed through it, watching him with curious eyes.  Steve sighed softly.  “He was a friend.  He did a lot for his country.  A lot.  We wouldn’t have won the war without him.”

“I’m sorry.  I’m really not trying to interrogate you.  It’s just… I’ve been dealing with Tony’s issues for years.  He won’t talk about his dad.  I think some of his problems are rooted in whatever went on between them.  I thought…  I don’t know.  Forget it.”

Steve squinted in the bright midday sun.  “No, you can ask me.  I just don’t know what to tell you.  The Howard Stark I knew was… well, honestly?  He was a lot like Tony.”  _A hero.  A good man._   He flushed a little.  “Don’t tell Tony I told you that.”

Pepper seemed touched by that.  Maybe it was the soft, fond tone of his voice or the sincerity in his eyes.  He meant what he said.  “I think he’d like to hear that actually.  From you.  You intimidate him, you know.”

“What?  Why?”

“His father used to talk about you a lot,” she said.  “He took losing you very hard.  He never stopped looking for you.  I think Tony felt like he grew up unloved, like he was constantly being compared to Captain America and never measured up.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, Tony’s one of the most insecure people I know.”

Steve winced.  “He shouldn’t be.  He’s got nothing to prove.”

“He has issues,” Pepper repeated.  “Lots and lots of them.  And self-respect and commitment are major ones.”

Steve wasn’t sure what he should say.  He wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say.  It wasn’t any of his business.  And even if it was, he wasn’t qualified to render an opinion.  He wasn’t exactly an expert on love or women.  And he definitely wasn’t an expert on Stark.  But Pepper looked worried and crestfallen and like something serious was bothering her, and she’d been so kind to him.  “Listen, maybe it’s not my place to say.  I don’t know anything about what you have with Tony, but I do know that he’d have to be the world’s biggest idiot not to see what a wonderful thing he has in you.  And he may have issues, but an idiot he is not.”

Pepper actually blushed.  It made her look younger, girlish, not the sophisticated, intelligent woman Steve had grown accustomed to seeing.  She nudged him on the shoulder slightly.  “You’re a good guy, Steve,” she said.  “One in a million.”  She grimaced, ashamed of something she suddenly remembered.  “And I’m sorry about…  God, what was it?  Two weeks ago when you and Agent Barton came and I embarrassed you in front of Tony.”

He’d barely thought about it.  “Oh.  It was no big deal.  I’ve been embarrassed before, believe it or not.”  He gave her a disarming smile, and she laughed.

“Well, I meant what I said, though, when I was torturing you.  You really could have any woman you want.  All you need to do is look.”  He didn’t answer.  She looped her arm into the crook of his elbow and they walked back to the car.  He had the feeling she wanted to ask him about his love life again (it was pretty obvious she pitied him, or at least felt bad for him, being alone in this new world), but thankfully she didn’t.  Clint had learned early in their friendship that there were certain topics that were off-limits, and his shattered relationship with Peggy (and moving on from that level of heartbreak) was one of them.  Clint had his things that they never talked about as well, Loki and his past principally.  As close as they were, they respected each other’s distance.  Pepper was thankfully perceptive and respected Steve’s distance as well and said nothing more about it.

They drove in companionable silence back toward the Tower.  It was rush hour, so the traffic was thick, and they could have walked home faster.  Steve felt no inclination to do that, however.  He didn’t want to go back.  Back to boredom and waiting to hear from SHIELD and worrying about what had happened to him.  Back to the nightmares.  Pepper laid a hand on his knee, jarring him from his thoughts.  “Steve, you look like something’s bothering you again.  You sure you’re okay?”

He wasn’t sure of anything anymore, save that the pit of anxiety in his stomach was heavy and miserable.  All of the sudden it came rushing back, thoughts of his bad dreams and headaches, and the pain of which he’d been blissfully free that entire day surged anew.  He didn’t answer, looking blankly out the window at the people bustling on the sidewalk and warring with himself – _tell her and tell Banner and get some help God something isn’t right_ – until she grabbed his hand more insistently.  “Steve?”

“Something’s not right,” he said softly.

Her face fractured in concern.  “What?”

The cab ahead of them exploded.

Pepper shrieked in surprise and terror, reeling back against the leather seat.  Fiery wreckage was careening toward their car fast, faster than could be stopped, fast enough that it could barely be seen.  But Steve did see it, and he saw it in horrifying, detailed slow motion.  He let go of Pepper’s hand and pulled her screaming form to his chest and kicked out the door of the town car and jumped.  He tucked Pepper in his embrace, protecting her with his much larger frame, as the remains of the cab crashed down upon the roof and hood of their car.  The windshield was completely smashed.  It was unlikely the driver survived.

Steve stood, keeping Pepper tight in his arms.  He looked around quickly.  Ahead there was smoke and people screaming, running wildly away down 42nd Street from something up ahead.  He grasped Pepper by the shoulders.  She was shaken and there were tears in her eyes.  “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she gasped.  “Oh, my God…”

“Stay here,” Steve firmly ordered, “and call the police.”

“Steve, wait!”

She tried to hold on to him, but he was much stronger and faster and already running down the sidewalk.  He wove through the crowds of screaming people, twisting on light feet to avoid crying women and children and men glancing over their shoulders as they ran away as fast as possible.  Steve ducked as another car exploded on the congested street.  People screamed and fire erupted in huge orange jets of heat.  He ran out into the street, jumping with one smooth leap onto the hood of a car and flying across the tangled mess of stopped vehicles.  “Go!” he cried to the frightened drivers and passengers clambering from their cars.  The stink of burning oil was heavy on the summer air, and smoke was rapidly filling the street.  “Hurry!  Get out of here!”

From his vantage he could see down the road, see a man dressed entirely in black with a ski mask over his face wielding what looked like a rocket launcher.  Steve watched him aim with ridiculous calm, a trained professional no doubt, and fire again.  Another car in front of him went up in a ball of fire and smoke, the explosion booming along the tall buildings flanking 42nd Street. The burning wreckage peppered the poor people trying to escape.  He rushed forward, squeezing down to the road and between two cars to get to a woman who was screaming hysterically, her clothes on fire.  He pushed her down, patting frantically at her legs, using his bare hands and body to smother the crawling flames before they grew stronger.  “My kids!” she screamed at him.  Her brown eyes were huge with panic and tears.  “They’re in there!”  She frantically pointed at the remains of her SUV, the front of which was buried under fiery debris and burning itself.

Steve wasted not a second, ignoring the flames rapidly engulfing the car and grabbed the searing hot handle of the rear passenger door.  The door wouldn’t open, so he ripped it right off.  “Come on!” he called to the sobbing children inside.  The three kids (the oldest wasn’t more than seven) were hysterical and frightened beyond measure.  There were two boys and a little girl who was fastened into a car seat.  He tried to unstrap the one closest to him, but the boy was kicking and struggling so much it was nearly impossible.  He softened his voice and forced a comforting smile to his face.  The boys both wore Avengers shirts.  “Hey, guys.  It’s alright.  You know who I am?”  They cried harder.  Steve felt the unbearable heat of the fire inching closer.  If it got to the fuel before he got them out…  “I’m Captain America.”  That got their attention, and they stopped screaming to look at him.  He smiled again.  “I’m going to get you guys out of this, but I need you to unstrap and climb over to me.”

The street shook with another violent explosion.  Steve didn’t dare glance away, afraid that if he did, he’d lose the kids.  The eldest one undid his seatbelt.  “Help your brother.  Okay?”  The little guy nodded, undoing his younger sibling’s seatbelt.  “Now come on.  I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”  The younger one hesitated a second more, a second Steve spent nearly panicking because the entire front of the car was on fire now, before throwing his small body toward him.  Steve caught the child and handed him out to his still sobbing mother.

The next one came right after.  “Can you get her?” the mother wailed, taking her other boy.  Steve pushed into the car, reaching for the screaming toddler.  He fumbled with the straps of the car seat, wondering how the hell to get the stubborn things off in an emergency, before laying his big hand protectively over the child’s face.  He pushed the car seat back and yanked the straps clear out of it.  Then he lifted the toddler out.

Somehow over the chaos he heard the distinctive sound of the rocket launcher firing.  He sensed more than saw the missile coming at him.  It hit an abandoned bus beside them, and the next thing he knew a significant portion of it was flying toward him.  He moved without thinking, tucking the wailing child to his chest and gathering the mother and her boys in front of him.  He stood against the onslaught of flaming glass and metal.  It struck his back, crushing and grinding and wrapping around him as he dug his sneakers into the road.  _Push._   The command went through his mind fervently as an eternity of deafening noise followed, the pressure against him unbelievable.  _Push back.  Push back!_  And he pushed back with a cry of effort and every bit of himself.

It stopped.  The tiny body in his arms was sobbing, clinging to his neck.  He lifted his head and looked at the wreckage surrounding them, idly shocked that he’d just done that, that the bus had _bent_ and _broken_ around him.  It should have crushed them, but it hadn’t.  The fire behind them was burning out of control now, and there was no easy way to escape, so he planted his foot against the remains of the side of the bus and kicked with everything he had.  The broken part moved, scraping across the asphalt, and he picked up the other boy and ran through the narrow gap.  The mother followed just in time.  Their SUV ignited behind them.

Steve took a deep breath, glancing back at the inferno raging.  “Whoa!” yelled the older boy as he set the kid to his feet.  He was staring at Steve in utter amazement with eyes as wide as saucers.  “Wow…  You really are Captain America!”

Steve looked down at the girl in his arms and found her unhurt.  He smoothed the child’s mussed dark hair before tenderly peeling her from his chest and handing her to her mother.  “Take her.”  The woman nodded, awestruck.  “Go!”

She called after him, thanking him with a strained, shaking voice, before allowing herself to be escorted out by the EMTs arriving on the scene.  He didn’t watch, turning instead to the man destroying 42nd Street in broad daylight.  The police were coming now, sirens blaring and lights flashing.  He could hear their shouts, demands that the attacker drop his weapon and stand down.  They were huddled among the stopped cars, taking cover with their handguns and assault rifles held at the ready.  Steve climbed atop the hood of another car, looking down the street.  The cops immediately ordered him to get down, to get out of the way and leave the area with the other civilians.  Without his shield and uniform, they didn’t recognize him.

Though the haze of smoke, he spotted the man with the rocket launcher.  He was loading it again.  He looked flustered, yelling though not at his victims fleeing the destroyed street.  Steve noticed that the man stood in front of a bank.  Distantly he could hear yelling that had nothing to do with the chaos on the street.  Barked orders and frightened voices and crying.  People being threatened.  _They’re robbing the bank._   That was what this was about.  He was sure of it, knowing it with certainty that seemed impossible, like he was there inside the bank and watching the horrific scene unfold.  This wasn’t a random act of terrorism or depravity.  The man was creating a diversion and blocking law enforcement from reaching the bank so his buddies could finish the job.  It seemed extreme, but Steve knew better than anyone that evil knew no concept of restraint.  With that rocket launcher, the man could conceivably keep the police trapped and suppressed as long as his ammunition held; the amount of damage he was causing and would continue to cause was devastating.  But he couldn’t stop Captain America.

Steve ignored the shouts of the cops behind him, running through the mess of the street, jumping across cars, sliding over hoods, weaving among the debris.  The thug saw his approach, leveling the rocket launcher at him and firing.  He lithely avoided the missile, rolling to the street and snatching up a hubcap that had been knocked free from a car.  He twisted, jumping clear above an overturned truck, before landing on the sidewalk maybe twenty feet from the perpetrator.  He threw the hubcap like it was his shield (a weak, lame excuse for his shield, at any rate) and it collided with the man’s head while he fumbled to reload his weapon.  The man went down, and the rocket launcher clanked to the sidewalk.

But Steve didn’t stop.  He sprinted further before skidding to a stop outside the large glass windows of the bank.  Pressing himself flush to the polished marble of the exterior, he turned and looked quickly inside.  It was just as he envisioned.  Nine men, all with automatic weapons.  The poor customers and employees were huddled in the center of the lobby, except for a few who were frantically gathering the money the men were trying to steal.  Five men guarded the hostages.  He committed their locations to memory with a single glance. 

And then he charged through the window.

Glass shattered.  People screamed.  He moved fast, faster than he ever had before.  He was across the lobby in a blink and a breath, throwing his knee into the man closest to him.  The thug was sent flying, his chest crushed.  The other men realized that they were under attack, but it was too late.  Steve was already on the next, throwing a punch that dropped another assailant roughly to the gleaming floor.  People were crying, pressing themselves down and to each other as Steve devoured the distance to the third man.  He knocked aside his gun before wrapping an arm around the man’s chest.  Another of the soldiers whirled, firing a shotgun at him, but he only succeeded in shooting his friend.  Steve wrapped his hand around the man’s hand that held the gun, aimed, and rapidly squeezed two shots off, taking out the other’s knees.  He howled, falling, his automatic rifle discharging.  The bullets flew everywhere, across the lobby toward the teller booths and down into the floor and up to the ceiling.  Steve dropped the man he was holding and stepped to the other, kicking the gun away before driving his shoe into his temple and knocking him unconscious.

He heard a gun firing and turned and twisted.  He darted among the sloppy shots, seeing them as though they weren’t cutting through the air at incredible speeds, as though he could simply avoid them.  And he did simply avoid them.  He kicked the gun right out of the man’s hands and punched him across the face.  A furious howl resounded as the others of the party came at him, but they were no match for him.  He kneed one in the chest, sending him flying across the bank and smashing through the polished wood of the booths.  The next he tackled, driving him to the floor and springing back to his feet over the man’s now unmoving body.  Gunfire chased him, and he dove for cover behind the booths.  He grimaced, feeling the bullets slam into the wood between him and the shooter and knowing he had to do something quickly before innocents got caught in the crossfire.  He reached up to one of the teller’s work stations, found something to use a weapon, and bounded back over the counter and flung the letter opener toward the man unloading his rifle at him.  The guy was across the lobby near the opposite wall behind the booths.  The letter opener sank deep into his shoulder with enough power to force him back a couple of steps before embedding itself into the wall behind him.  He slumped down.

Bullets narrowly missed him, and he dropped to the cold floor and rolled.  “Get back!”  Steve stopped short when he spotted the last robber.  The man had taken a hostage, a pretty young girl with red hair and green eyes filled with tears.  She was obviously a bank teller, a poor innocent trapped in this sudden and horrific nightmare.  The black-clad thug was pressing his gun to her temple menacingly.  Through the holes in his ski mask, he looked panicked and enraged and terrified.  Terrified of Steve.  “Get the hell back!  _Get back!_ ”

“Let her go,” Steve warned.  He was kneeling on the floor.  There was a fallen handgun a few yards to his left.  It was beyond his reach, but even if it wasn’t, there was no way he could go for it without the man shooting the hostage.  He wasn’t that fast.  “Let her go.  You don’t want to kill her.”

“You want me to kill you instead?” the man yelled, pointing his gun toward Steve.  The people huddled behind them screamed in fear, and the woman sobbed, shaking in the man’s rough grip.  “You son of a bitch!  Who the hell are you?  No, no – it doesn’t matter!  Get your goddamn hands up or I’ll blow her brains out!”  The gun went back to the young woman’s head, threatening, and she quivered in terror, tears rolling down her pale cheeks and ruining her make-up.  The robber was losing his control, losing his patience.  “I mean it!  I’ll do it!  I’ll–”

A loud bang echoed through the bank.  The man lurched back, a bullet in his forehead, dead center between his eyes.  He fell to the ground with a heavy, lifeless thud.

Everything was silent.  Everything was still.

Steve stood stiffly, the gun in his hand unwavering, aimed at the place the man had been a second before.  The woman finally shrieked in shock, running toward him and away from the bloody body on the floor behind her.  The police barged through the front of the bank, rifles drawn and yelling.  Steve released a slow breath and lowered his arm.  The world seemed slow, not quite real, lethargic and lazy as the chaos went on around him.  People were sobbing, crying, led to safety by EMTs and police officers.  There were murmurs of shock, of fear and relief, of _amazement_.

A cop stood in front of him, asking him questions, but he just handed the stunned officer the gun.  And then he heard Pepper’s voice and she was beside him, covered in soot and ash but alright.  She pulled him into her arms, holding him and talking quickly, asking if he was okay, but he couldn’t really hear what she was saying.  He didn’t know if he was okay.  Her soft hands were on his cheeks, and her blue eyes were staring into his, but it didn’t ground him.  It didn’t make sense.  The shock of what had happened, of what he’d done, was starting to sink in, to infiltrate the haze of concentration that had fallen onto his mind.

The girl who’d been held at gunpoint was still weeping.  As the EMTs led her away, she grabbed Steve’s arm desperately, gasping her gratitude in a stuttering, sobbed rush.  He didn’t hear that, either.  He didn’t hear anything.  He didn’t feel anything.  He was numb.  Distant.  This wasn’t real.  It couldn’t be real.  He looked down at his hands.  He couldn’t explain it but they didn’t seem like _his_ hands.  In the space of barely a minute, he’d taken out nine armed bank robbers by himself, and not a single civilian had been killed.  He’d saved dozens of people.  But that wasn’t what was bothering him.

He’d shot that man and saved that woman’s life, but he wasn’t sure _how_ he’d done it.

He’d never reached for the gun.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony was literally knee-deep in trying to repair the propulsion system in Iron Man’s boot when JARVIS’ voice cut through his workshop.  “Sir.”  Tony tried to ignore it, his leg propped onto a workbench with a probe jabbed into the knee joint and a screw driver between his teeth.  The ending guitar riff of The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes” blasted through the room, so that helped drown out the interruption.  Still, JARVIS was persistent.  Tony wasn’t entirely sure where the AI had learned that particularly infuriating trait because he sure as hell wouldn’t have programmed it.  “Sir.”  Whatever JARVIS wanted could wait.  He was getting frustrated with this bug (about as frustrated as he was with his sore and weak body, but the suit was easier to fix).  Suddenly his music was cut off.  “Sir, please.”

Tony sighed and reached for his can of Red Bull on a cart a few feet from him.  The tender skin and aching muscles of his abdomen were stretched painfully as he did that, but he refused to surrender.  He was tired of being in pain.  The meds worked well enough, but he’d been off the strong stuff for days now and getting back into the swing of things was more difficult and aggravating than he’d anticipated.  “What?” he snapped, snatching the can and taking a huge drink out of it.

“Miss Potts has been trying to reach you for more than hour,” JARVIS announced.

Tony crushed the empty can in his hand and tossed it to the trash can at the other end of the workbench.  It bounced off the edge and clattered to the floor.  He rolled his eyes and went back to the boot on his leg.  Something was wrong with the dampeners in the knee joint.  They weren’t cushioning properly so that the force from his improved repulsor system wasn’t being adequately displaced.  His poor knees had had about enough abuse.  “What does she want?” he asked absently, fiddling with the power distributors along the calf of the suit.  He furrowed his brow slightly.  “Wait.  What time is it?  Did I miss dinner or something?”

If it was possible for JARVIS to sound long-suffering, he was managing it.  “I must insist you watch this,” the AI calmly commanded, and the huge display at the other end of the workbenches brightly came to life. 

Tony ignored the order for a second as some sort of news story appeared on the screen, turning back to his work.  But the riled voice of a reporter cut through the pleasant haze of concentration (and Vicodin and one too many energy drinks, if he was being honest).  “–but at this point we don’t know much more.  It’s really a miracle that only one person was killed.”  It was an image of a rattled man standing in front of smoky wreckage.  Through the shifting clouds of gray, Tony saw what looked like a New York City street, filled with smoldering, wrecked cars and pandemonium.  People covered in ash were everywhere, being escorted by police officers and emergency responders.  “As you can see, it’s barely controlled chaos down here.”

“Thanks, Robert.”  The video switched to a woman wearing too much make-up behind an anchor’s desk at CNN.  “To recap, an explosive situation today on 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan just outside the Bank of America.  A team of nine masked men attempted to rob the bank while taking hostages and causing significant damage to the street outside.  One of the men launched missiles _into_ the traffic on 42 nd Street, destroying multiple cars and barricading the police from reaching the bank.”  Tony glanced over his shoulder at the large windows behind him.  42nd Street was right outside the Tower.  The blue sky was indeed marred by plumes of hazy smoke rising from the city streets below.  “The amount of damage can’t be ascertained for certain right now, but we’re estimating at least a dozen cars and trucks have been completely destroyed, some of which are still burning as fire crews try to deal with the disaster.  Even more vehicles were damaged, along with multiple storefronts.”  She stopped for a second, flustered.  “Okay, we have an eye witness account coming in.  We’re taking you to Jennifer Mayers, who’s outside of the area that’s been set up for emergency treatment of the victims.  Jenn?”

Another woman appeared, her face gleaming with sweat and her hair mussed.  She held her microphone close to her chest.  She stood with a second woman who had three children pressed to her.  A little girl was tightly and protectively enveloped in her arms, and another smaller boy clung to her leg.  The older kid was excitedly bouncing.  “Thanks, Andrea.  Accounts of today’s incident are starting to emerge from the poor people trapped on the street during the attack.  This family was apparently in their SUV when the explosions began.  Can you tell us what happened?”

The woman had obviously been crying quite frantically.  Her face was tear-stained and her eyes were red.  She looked deeply shaken.  “I – I’m not sure.  One minute we’re stopped at the light and the next the cars next to us were just blowing up.  People were screaming and things were burning…  And my kids were trapped–”

“And Captain America rescued us!” the kid proclaimed, smiling brighter than the sun and veritably bubbling with excitement.

“Oh, shit,” Tony murmured.

The boy was rushing through his tale like this was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him.  It probably was.  “He ripped the door right off our car and got me and my brother and sister out of there.  And then this bus exploded and it was flying right at us and it was going to crush us but he stopped it all by himself.”

The news woman seemed somewhat incredulous, her eyes darting to the kid’s shirt which proudly proclaimed “AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!” in huge white block letters over cartoon versions of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.  “Captain America stopped a bus from crushing you?”

The boy beamed.  “Yeah.  He just held my sister and pushed back against it and it stopped.  He was so strong he didn’t even have to use his hands.  It was awesome!”

The mother looked a tad embarrassed.  “I’m not sure if that really was Captain America.  I think it was just some good Samaritan trying to help.”

“He said he was Captain America, mom!”

“Uh, J?” Tony asked, a wince twisting his face.  “Tell me Rogers is still loafing around my tower and that he had nothing to do with this circus.”

JARVIS wasn’t about to lie to him.  “I informed you approximately six hours ago that Miss Potts was taking Captain Rogers out to lunch,” the AI replied.  “I must say it is rather hypocritical of you to continually lecture Doctor Banner on his poor listening skills when you are hardly one to talk.”

The reporter was blathering on, the camera panning over the destruction and wreckage filling the street.  “At this point we can only confirm two of the bank robbers were killed, one during a hostage situation.  It appears the same man who intervened on the street with the robber firing on the traffic and pedestrians also rescued the hostages in the bank.  Evidence is beginning to suggest that this mystery hero may in fact be Captain America, though NYPD and city officials have at this point issued no formal statement.  If it was Captain America, the people he saved during this violent attempted robbery can only be thankful that he was apparently in the right place at the right time.”

Tony could hardly stand to listen to this garbage.  They switched back to the newsroom where more people were preparing to sensationalize this story, launching into some piece about Rogers’ life (in case there were people left in this country that weren’t aware that he was the world’s first Avenger and a lost hero from World War II and the leader of a team of superheroes that had saved New York a year and a half ago and on and on).  Tony winced, looking out the window again at the wisps of smoke dissipating into the otherwise calm and pristine summer afternoon.  “Is Pepper alright?”

“Yes,” JARVIS answered.  “She is with Captain Rogers and requests that you dispatch security to the rear entrance of the building.  They are both currently being interviewed by the police, but the media has noticed she was present during the attack.  The one casualty was unfortunately one of your company drivers.  Once they make the connection, a ‘circus’, as you so eloquently put it, is likely inevitable.  She would prefer to avoid it.  Also, Director Fury is calling.”

“Of course.  Wouldn’t be a circus without the ringleader,” Tony muttered.  “She said she was okay, though, right?”

“She did not say otherwise, though she did seem upset.  Shall I put Director Fury through?”

 _No._   “If you have to.”

Fury’s irate tone suddenly blasted through the workshop.  “Stark, do I want to know what the hell is going on there?  Why is an out-of-uniform Captain America plastered all over every TV in the country?”

Tony deactivated Iron Man’s boot with a soft hydraulic hiss.  The armor released his leg and he lowered the tingling limb to the floor.  Pain shot up his midsection, nearly doubling him over.  He stifled the curse bubbling up his throat and pressed his hand to the still tender and bandaged spot under his t-shirt.  “How should I know?” he gasped with a grimace.  “It wasn’t my turn to watch him.”

“Actually, it _was_ your turn.  That’s why he’s there, so somebody can keep an eye on him while he recovers from what happened.”  Fury sounded tense, maybe even concerned.  Tony couldn’t help but cynically wonder if it was due to actual worry over Rogers or worry over another mess unfolding in Midtown in which an Avenger had become inexplicably involved.

“Not my idea,” Tony returned.  “Roped into it, in fact.  You thawed him, so you take care of him.”

“Cold considering he saved your life,” Fury stated sharply.  “I trust you’ve been paying enough attention to tell me how he’s been.  Is he alright?”

Tony winced and not just because of his sore stomach.   What he had said _was_ cold and he didn’t really know how Steve was doing.  He hadn’t heard or seen otherwise (of course, he hadn’t been listening or looking or even caring, really), so he assumed all was well.  “He’s been dandy.  In fact, I don’t know why he’s still here.  Everything came back normal.  All the DNA tests even.  Shouldn’t he be back out there with you guys already?  Kicking ass and taking names?  Although he seems totally willing to do that on his own, the good little hero that he is.”  Tony shook his head in confusion as if Fury could see him.  “And why are you so worked up about this?  It’s not like he did something wrong.  Captain America’s doing his thing, stopping the bad guys and saving the day.  Isn’t that what he’s supposed to do?  Or are you jealous he didn’t come in to ask daddy if it was okay?  Exigent circum–”

“He’s skipped every appointment with the doctors this week,” Fury interrupted.  He still sounded tense and maybe a little ashamed, like he was betraying Rogers’ trust (if a spy could be worried about such mundane and trite things like loyalty).  “And he hasn’t checked in with the psychiatrists he was supposed to see.”

That gave Tony pause.  He meant to immediately brush it aside, but the uncomfortable and unwanted sensation of worry assailed him now, too.  Admittedly he didn’t know Steve all that well, but not continuing with follow-up care seemed… uncharacteristic of him.  He followed orders, even requests masquerading as orders.  “Maybe he didn’t want to be poked and prodded anymore.  Maybe he wanted to close the damn book on the whole thing.”  _God knows I do._ “Is that actual concern for someone in your voice there?  Or am I imagining things?”

“Of course I’m concerned,” Fury sharply retorted.  It was impossible to tell if he was actually hurt by Tony’s accusation.  He sighed.  “Look, as much as I enjoy these little contests we have on who’s the bigger asshole, I just want to get a lid on this situation fast and get Rogers back here to have the doctors check him over.”

“He’s fine,” Tony said.  “In his element, it seems.  Everything is peachy-keen, jelly bean.”

“Not everything.  Dan Lahey killed himself this morning.”

Fury’s solemn announcement came rather out of left field.  Tony’s eyes widened.  Something akin to shock washed over him, leaving him chilled and reeling for a moment.  He hadn’t been conscious during most of their ordeal in Lahey’s lab, but the parts he did remember were laced with agony.  The bastard had shot him without care or remorse and then used him against Steve and Bruce with equally little regret.  That was barbaric, cold and calculating in a way that made his skin crawl and his heart clench in anger and fear.  He’d been _nothing_ to that man.  A tool.  A means to an end.  He didn’t remember much, but he did recall Steve’s eyes, bright with terror he’d been trying to hide, the soldier’s hands steady against his body and working desperately to keep him alive.  He recalled Bruce fighting to keep the Hulk contained, fighting to keep himself together, fighting just as frantically to save him.  They’d both been means to an end as well.  The whole harrowing, degrading experience had been wrought by a sick bastard who’d been prepared to do _anything_ to see his experiment succeed.

Now he was dead.

He didn’t feel nearly as happy about that as he thought he should have.  “Jesus,” he whispered.  “Does Banner know?”

“Nobody knows.  We’re still trying to get a handle on how he did it.”  Fury hesitated a moment, as though he was debating revealing more.  “I don’t feel right about this, Stark.  Maybe all the evidence points to this being over, but I don’t think it is.”

“Are your super-spy senses tingling?”

“I’m serious,” came the terse response.

“So am I.”  He didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt protective.  Steve surely had a reason why he hadn’t seen the SHIELD doctors or therapists, and Tony inexplicably felt like he needed to honor that.  Granted, he had no place between the Director of SHIELD and his agents, but he felt like he owed Rogers at least this much.  “I’ll have Steve call home when he gets back here if that will make you feel better.”

“No, that doesn’t make me feel better!  Whatever Lahey did to him…  Well, our chances of figuring that out took a serious blow this morning.  Barton and Romanoff have found nothing more on the mercenaries, at least nothing to help us uncover who hired them.  The researchers have found nothing from Rogers’ test results.  The techs going over Lahey’s data have found nothing.  And I know Banner has been working on it.  He’d tell us if he figured anything out, right?”

That question made Tony uncomfortable because he didn’t know the answer.  And it was a question loaded with subtext, with connotation he didn’t want to hear.  He pretended to be nonchalant.  “Right.”

“We have mountains of information that all leads us back to the same damn place we were two weeks ago.  We have no clue as to what this experiment did or if the Cap is okay.”

“Maybe it did nothing.  Maybe the super soldier serum _did its job_ and protected Rogers from the super evil serum.  Ever consider that?”  Tony liked to argue, and he didn’t mind being difficult now and then (or all the time, if he felt like it).  This was getting a little ridiculous.  He hadn’t even been involved in the debates and discussions over Rogers’ well-being.  He had no idea what the data looked like, what the statistics and test results had confirmed, what the conclusions were.  He had no basis for an opinion, educated or otherwise.  But that had never stopped him before.  “Just leave the guy alone.  Obviously he’s okay enough to save a bunch of people from some extremely over-the-top bank robbers.”

Fury didn’t seem appeased.  “I want him back here.  I’d rather he came in voluntarily.”

“What the hell does that mean?  Is that a threat?”

“Of course not.  But we _need_ him to report in.  Until we know for certain he’s alright, he can’t be involved with things like this!  This is the reason why I relieved him of duty!”

That disturbing need to protect Rogers reared its ugly head again.  This time it was mixed with a less-disturbing inclination to just not cooperate with SHIELD.  “You can’t bench him forever.  If he says he’s fine, he’s fine.  Look, I’ll tell him you called and I’ll tell him to report in tomorrow morning and I’ll make sure he doesn’t leave the Tower until then.  If Barton’s back, you should send him to come pick him up.  The two of them were connected at the hip, so I’m sure that’ll smooth things over.  Does that satisfy you?”

The tone of Tony’s voice suggested he didn’t give a damn whether or not Fury found that agreeable.  Tony didn’t like Rogers, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to force the soldier to do something he clearly didn’t want to do on behalf of a shadow spy organization he didn’t even come close to trusting.  Thankfully, Fury didn’t argue further.  Perhaps he knew his hands were tied.  Even if Captain America had been created by SSR (which had become SHIELD) and had rescued by SHIELD and worked for SHIELD, SHIELD didn’t own him.  And hopefully nobody owned Steve Rogers, so even if Fury was considering pulling rank on the captain, Steve would stand tall and tell him off if he didn’t want to comply.  “First thing tomorrow morning.  0700.”

“Sure thing.  Nice talking to you.”  JARVIS ended the phone call.  Tony stood still in the room a moment, not quite sure what to do or what to think.  His abdomen was throbbing again.  He’d been pushing himself too hard, not respecting the severity of the wound and stressing it too much and too soon.  He’d been so caught up in trying to prove to himself that he was fine, that he himself could shake this off and get back to normal, that he’d blinded himself to pretty much everything and everyone else.  That was who he was.  He powered through his problems and got past his pain and his fear by tinkering and building and inventing.  It was what he had done after Afghanistan.  It was what he had done after New York.  And it was what he had done this time, too.  Maybe it hadn’t been the best course.  Maybe it hadn’t been the best course for any of them.  Hell, he hadn’t said a word about the whole experience to Bruce since he’d felt well enough to be up and about a week ago.  They’d carried on like nothing had happened.  And Steve was obviously trying to do the same, only he didn’t have the familiarity of home and the comfort of friends to help him (or enable him, for that matter).  Tony knew he wasn’t the most well-adjusted person, and his experiences with the Mandarin had opened his eyes to a few things, namely that isolation and obsession were not good ways to get through tough stuff.  But here he was, trying to do it again.  And so was Bruce, burying himself in his work.  And Steve, doing… well, whatever it was he’d been doing the last couple of weeks.  If Tony was having a hard time getting over their ordeal and he’d spent most of it unconscious, he couldn’t imagine how they were feeling.

Suddenly he felt really guilty.  That wasn’t something he felt often.  He didn’t like it.  “JARVIS, you noticed anything off about Rogers?” 

“Off in what way, sir?”

“Any way that rings of not adapting too well to being a human guinea pig.  And don’t be difficult.”

The AI paused a moment.  That was more than enough to alert Tony that he had indeed noticed something.  “Physically he seems well.  I have gathered data on his physiological attributes from SHIELD and compared that to what I have measured during his exercise routines and my findings indicate his endurance, strength, and agility are all normal.”

“He works out?”

“Yes.  Quite often in fact.”

“I thought the serum was supposed to keep him fit all the time.”

“Well, sir, I believe working out, as you put it, is for him what inventing is for you.  A comfort.  Something that distracts him from his pain.”

Tony grimaced.  JARVIS was too damn smart.  “So he is in pain. Physical or mental?  And how bad is it?”

“Both, I believe, though he has not complained to anyone of it so it is difficult for me to judge.”  JARVIS hesitated.  “Captain Rogers has been suffering some rather distressing sleep disturbances.”

“How distressing?”

“Severely.”

Tony gritted his teeth, shifting his weight again to ease the strain off his abdomen.  He limped to the window, staring down at the smoke.  “And you didn’t think to inform anyone of this?”

“Considering the trauma he endured, I believed some level of persistent nightmares and even physical discomfort to be inevitable.  He has exhibited classic signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Difficulty sleeping.  A flattened emotional affect, though this is also difficult for me to judge considering I have no personality baseline with which to compare.  Difficulty concentrating.  Increasing avoidance.  Hypervigilance.”

“Who the hell made you a shrink?”

“I have learned a few things as your assistant.”

“Don’t be a smart ass.  You should have said something.”

“Captain Rogers asked me not to tell anyone,” JARVIS admitted.  “I respected his wishes.”

Tony shook his head.  As much as he would never admit it aloud, he was fearful that Fury was right.  Rogers needed a professional to help him through this.  “If he can’t sleep, he needs to get help.”

“Ah, yes, sir.  As I said before, you are one to talk.  And your version of help is normally found at the bottom of a bottle, which we both know is not an option for the captain.”

Tony sighed irately.  They all had their problems.  They all had scars, emotional and physical, that went deep.  He didn’t feel qualified to deal with his own issues, let alone Rogers’.  If Steve didn’t want to talk about it, maybe it was best to let it alone.  It wasn’t his place ( _God, please let it never be my place_ ) to dictate to Steve how he needed to handle his troubles.  Things healed.  They always did.  Still, Steve was either having a hell of an aversion to all things medical and research related (which was completely understandable) or he was trying to hide something.  It was impossible to tell which.

He hadn’t signed on to deal with this.

And then there was Bruce.  Another plethora of mental issues wrapped up in a neat and tidy little bow of fake but somehow convincing normalcy, and Bruce’s issues went deep.  Tony certainly didn’t want Bruce to find out from SHIELD that Lahey had killed himself.  Considering how wracked with guilt Bruce had seemed after what had happened, discovering that Lahey had committed suicide would only compound the problem.  Banner had done an admirable job of seeming composed, but Tony knew him too well not to see the shame and regret weighing on him, wearing him down.  Bruce liked to talk shop a lot when they worked together, mumbling his way through complex problems and equally complex solutions.  But he’d been utterly silent, so much so that Tony wasn’t even sure _what_ he was working on.  At some point he had been looking over Rogers’ test results (was Steve even aware that Bruce had access to them?  Tony didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to ask), but that had been days ago.  He hadn’t even seen Bruce since lunchtime where they’d chatted about subatomic particles over sandwiches before heading to their respective labs.  “Where’s Banner?” he asked.

“Doctor Banner is currently on the 31st floor,” JARVIS responded.  “He asked that he not be disturbed.  Shall I disturb him anyway?”

“Did Pepper say when they’d be back?”

“Any minute now.  I took the liberty of summoning security as she requested.”

Tony sighed, tipping his head slightly.  “Alright.  Uh, well, what time is it?”

“Nearly five o’clock.”

“Dinner?  Order something she likes.  And something Rogers likes.  And have it brought up in case they’re hungry.  And make sure the news assholes stay away.  Pepper has people who handle that sort of thing, right?  Get them over here ASAP.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I guess I’m gonna go down and wait for them to get back.”

“A wise choice, sir.”

* * *

Any minute now ended up being more than an hour.  Tony hated waiting almost as much as he hated being handed things, and both of which had occurred with an extremely frustrating intensity as the PR and security personnel from Stark Industries flooded the ground floor of the Tower awaiting Pepper’s return.  They looked to him for direction, for how to phrase a press release (which was sadly necessary since the news networks had pieced together that Pepper had been present at the attack and that the man responsible for saving everyone had indeed been Captain America and that she and Steve had been together beforehand which of course led the reporters to ask why which _of course_ prompted a flurry of theories ranging from Tony Stark’s girl cheating on him with Captain America to Captain America acting as Iron Man’s bodyguard to the terrorists actually belonging to some sort of convoluted plot to bring down the Avengers).  It was all outrageous bullshit and it all too easily reminded Tony of why he hated the media.  His answers to the people surrounding him and pestering him were of two sorts: “it’s your job, so figure it out” and “no goddamn comment – make it sound nicer than that”.

Eventually the company car pulled into the garage beneath the Tower from the rear entrance.  Security was there to calm the reporters trying to follow it and keep them away.  Tony was waiting in front of the elevator, wearily trading his weight from one foot to another because at this point his abdomen was a pulsing mass of misery in the middle of his body.  The sleek, black car stopped, and one of the security guards opened the door.

Pepper was out and across the few feet between them in a second.  She looked okay, filthy but okay, her hair mussed and her face streaked with dirt.  Her previously white blouse was mostly blackened by soot, which she smeared onto his t-shirt as she collapsed into his arms.  He cupped the back of her head in his hand.  “Hey, you alright?”

“I’m okay,” Pepper said.  She pulled away.  Her eyes were bright and she managed a weak smile.  She clung to him for a moment more, closing her eyes and lowering her head back to his shoulder.  As Tony held her, he watched Steve get out of the car.  And right away he knew something wasn’t right.  He’d never imagined that Captain America could look so… _messed up_.  He was extremely pale around the dirt and ash covering his face.  His eyes looked positively hollow, vacant like he wasn’t quite there, and they were made darker by the heavy bags beneath them.  And even though he was doing an admirable job of trying not to, he was wincing.  Perpetually.  Tony knew insomnia and nightmares could do a number on a person.  The last time he’d seen Rogers had admittedly been a few days before, but he didn’t recall the soldier looking so haggard.  This wasn’t the same man who’d walked into his building a couple of weeks ago in a brand new uniform, all cool confidence and silent strength.  This wasn’t the same man his father had never shut up about.  This wasn’t the same man who’d flown into enemy territory on a fool’s quest to save his best friend and who’d stared down Nazis and HYDRA madmen and who’d sacrificed himself to save the world and who’d led the Avengers into battle with a cool voice and a smart plan when the odds had been insurmountably stacked against them.  This was some stranger with a white face and dead eyes whose every move seemed to scream fragility and defeat.

“How about you, Cap?” Tony asked, wondering if his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him and kind of hoping they were.  “You alright?”

Steve looked plain exhausted as he walked around the back of the car.  He didn’t speak, managing something that resembled a nod.  Tony felt even more concerned as Pepper left his embrace and reached over for Steve’s hand.  She took it gently and pulled him toward the elevator.  “Come on.  Let’s get you upstairs so you can rest.”

Tony released a slow breath, feeling just a tiny bit jealous that Pepper was so concerned with Steve.  But he stuffed it, dismissing the people still trying to hand him things.  The three of them stepped inside the elevator and Pepper immediately ordered, “Take us up, JARVIS.”

“Of course, Miss Potts.”

“There’s dinner, if you’re hungry,” Tony said as the elevator began to move and the silence began to irk him.  He stood between Steve and Pepper, and the tension radiating from Rogers was palpable.  Tony decided not to beat around the bush.  He didn’t do that for anyone, hesitate or tip-toe or dance around the elephant in the room, so he just went for it.  “So… I hear you guys had a busy day.”

Steve didn’t react, but Pepper did.  She inconspicuously reached for Tony’s hand and grabbed it tightly, almost painfully so.  But, surprising them both, Steve answered.  “That’s one way to put it,” he said.  “Had to stop them, though.”

“You certainly did that,” Tony said.  “But I swear you are a magnet for trouble.  Two hostage situations in two weeks.  You oughta come with a warning label.”

Steve actually smiled a little at that.  It looked strained and weak, but it was better than nothing.  “This one ended better than the last one,” he said.  He darted a look at Tony from the corner of his eye.  “Only the bad guys got hurt.”  His expression hardened into something not quite readable.  “Except your driver.  Sorry about that.”  He looked down, worrying his lower lip little with his teeth.  “I saw it coming.  Didn’t move fast enough, I guess.”

Pepper looked aghast.  She shared a concerned look with Tony.  For his own part, Tony was surprised, but not because he thought such a statement was out of character for Rogers.  He figured (hell, he _knew_ ) that Rogers was the kind of self-sacrificing idiot who took the loss of every man seriously, who blamed himself for his short-comings and failures even when said short-comings and failures were not at all his fault.  Even when the situation was intractable, fated to end as it ended, he took the burden of guilt, shouldered it like he was born to do it.  It was the sort of personality trait that Tony despised because it reeked of either false martyrdom or complete, self-deprecating sincerity, and with Rogers it was definitely the latter.  Like he really did take every mistake to heart and he really did think he could have prevented this or stopped that.  So it wasn’t the fact that he was saying this that was surprising.  It was the way he was saying it.  Not because he was driven by regret (although there was that) or because it was what he was supposed to say, but because he honestly believed he could have done it.  Like he truly had seen it coming but just had failed to move fast enough.

Creepy.

Pepper darted another glance at Tony.  “Steve, you did everything you could.  You saved my life.  Thanks.”

Steve snapped out of his thoughts a beat or two after Pepper said that, like he was still contemplating it all, running through the scenario in his head and trying to figure out where he’d faltered.  “Sure,” he said.

That didn’t seem to be enough for Pepper, and she nudged Tony painfully in the calf with her shoe.  “Oh, yeah.  Thanks for saving Pepper’s life,” Tony said.  He rolled his eyes when he realized what he hadn’t done since they’d all come back to the Tower two weeks ago.  “And thanks for, you know, sticking your hands in my guts and stopping me from bleeding to death.  I appreciate it.”  Pepper kicked him again only harder.  “Ow!  What!”

“Steve, really, it wasn’t your fault.  And if it hadn’t been for you, far more people would’ve died.  Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Pepper soothed.  She watched Steve, concerned that he wasn’t looking at her, that he didn’t even seem to be listening.  She moved past Tony and brushed her hand down Rogers’ arm, which finally caught his attention, before hugging him close and standing on her toes to kiss his cheek.  He awkwardly hugged her back.

Tony groaned inwardly and tried to keep his mouth shut.  Thankfully, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open and revealed the main common floor.  The three of them walked down the spacious hallway.  It was tense, awkwardly so, as they headed toward the kitchen.  The smell of pizza wafted toward them, and Tony’s stomach growled in spite of himself.  “Hopefully dinner’s still hot,” he said.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Pepper said.  She stopped and kissed Tony.  “I’m going to go take a quick shower.  I feel disgusting.  Then we can eat?”

“Sure you don’t need help with that?” Tony asked coyly.  And it wasn’t just an excuse not to be left alone with Rogers.

Pepper wanly smiled.  “Is Bruce coming?”  Tony’s smile slid.  He underestimated her sometimes.  Trying to get Bruce and Steve together at the same table.  Trying to get them to talk, or trying to get Bruce to take a look (even if it was cursory and informal) at Steve.  It didn’t matter because it was doomed to failure.  But Pepper was eternally persistent and eternally optimistic.  She had to be to put up with loving him.

Still, he wasn’t overly enthused about having some sort of group dinner at the moment.  He’d figured this would be more of a buffet, a grab-a-slice-and-go sort of thing.  He wasn’t in the mood for much else.  And besides that Tony still hadn’t thought about how to tell Bruce about Lahey.  Having them gathered around a table given all this unresolved guilt and worry and whatever else had the makings of a disaster, or at least something fantastically uncomfortable.  “Dunno.  He’s down playing with his plants.  He didn’t want to be bothered.”

“Well, ask him to come,” Pepper said.  She glanced to Steve, who was watching them with this reticent look on his filthy face.  “Maybe we should start eating together regularly as long as you’re staying with us, Steve.  I think we could all use the company.”  She was clearly worried for Rogers.  Tony wondered what the hell had gone on between them that day (besides the obvious near-death experience).  Pepper had that look about her that she wore when she was truly concerned about a situation she couldn’t fix.  To her credit, there weren’t many.  Pepper fixed his company, straightened out the media disasters he inevitably made, picked up his messes, and intervened on his behalf.  That was what she did.  She fixed things.  And she was going to try her best to fix this.  She smiled brightly, disarmingly.  “I’ll be right back.”

After she left, Tony stuffed his hands into the pockets of his gray slacks and fidgeted.  Then he got tired of standing still like an awkward loser and sauntered into the kitchen adjacent to the dining area and opened the gleaming stainless steel refrigerator.  “You want a beer?  A soda?  Or a pop?  What did they call it back in the Stone Age?”

There was no answer.  Tony fished a bottle of beer out of the fridge.  Then he grabbed another.  “After a day like today, you need a beer.  Or something harder.  Not that it matters, I guess, since you can’t get drunk.  I can, though.  That’s a relief.”  Still it was silent.  Tony closed the door of the refrigerator and looked at his companion.  “Steve?”

Steve had closed his eyes.  He was slouched against the wall of the dining area, his head bowed to his chest.  He was breathing sharply through his nose in a way that suggested he was fighting desperately just to suffer through something, just to hang on.  Sweat glistened on his forehead.  His hands were clenched into fists at his sides and every muscle in his upper body was taut and bulging through the thin cotton of his polo shirt.  “Cap?  You okay?”

The soldier still didn’t answer.  Tony was honestly getting more than a little concerned, but (though he could hardly admit it) he was slightly fearful of approaching the other man.  Rogers had at least fifty pounds of serum-enhanced muscle and a good few inches on him, and it was more than obvious he wasn’t exactly all there at the moment.  Startling him seemed patently unwise, so he walked closer slowly.  “Steve!”

Rogers snapped out of it, lurching off the wall.  Then he gasped and brought a shaking hand to his forehead.  He wiped the perspiration off his brow, smearing dirt and soot as he did so.  He looked at Stark in a mixture of shame and anger.  “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Sorry?  What the hell are you apologizing for?  You don’t look good.  Did anyone check you over after you did your hero thing?”

“No.”

It was like talking to a five year-old.  Tony gritted his teeth in exasperation.  “Well, don’t you think a doctor should look at you?”

“No.”

Steve’s response couldn’t have possibly been curter.  The dark shade of his eyes and every hard line of his body veritably screamed that Tony should _stay the hell away_.  But Tony was an expert at ignoring sound advice.  He stared at the captain, wondering if perhaps Fury was right.  Perhaps there was something wrong that went deeper than just PTSD.  Much like JARVIS, he really didn’t have a baseline with which to compare Steve’s current behavior.  He’d only spent a couple of days with the man off and on over the last eighteen months.  Who was to say that Rogers wasn’t a lot moodier when all of the poise and confidence and purpose of Captain America was stripped away?  The guy was totally defined by his superhero persona, this ideal soldier and war hero, this symbol of complete perfection.  _Nobody_ was perfect, and maybe Rogers was feeling lost and little resentful at having who he was pulled out from under him.

And maybe the serum wasn’t perfect, either.  Maybe it was struggling to contend with literally bringing Steve back from the dead, and there was damage it was trying to heal that the tests hadn’t shown.

Maybe.  But Tony was too smart to be satisfied by that.  “Here.  Drink.”  He offered the bottle of beer to Steve.  Steve looked at it like he’d never seen a beer before.  He seemed confused at what he was supposed to do.  “Having a senior moment?  Drink.  Beer.”

Steve shook his head.  “No.  Thanks, but I’m not thirsty.  Or hungry.”

Tony was starting to get annoyed.  “I ordered all this food.  There are starving children in the world.  Eat it.”

Steve didn’t even look at the boxes of pizza spread across the table behind them.  “I’m just going to get cleaned up and sleep.”

Exasperation went through Tony; he couldn’t help the frustration.  He’d tried doing something nice, tried to offer up something close to companionship for someone whose only friend was probably on the other side of the world, and Steve was completely ignoring it.  This was why he hadn’t wanted Rogers here, why he’d been trying to avoid him.  They fundamentally didn’t get along.  Steve pushed himself off the wall and started across the room toward the elevator on the other side.  “Fury called while you were out.”

Steve stopped.  He turned and regarded Tony with piercing eyes.  “What did he say?”

“He wants you back,” Tony answered.  Suddenly he felt like an ass for bringing this up when Rogers was obviously troubled.  Steve’s face loosened in a hopeful expression.  “Not back for work, though.  He wants you to see the doctors.  And the shrinks.”

That pleasant expression shattered.  “No,” he declared tersely.

“You know, Cap, maybe it’s not such a bad idea.  Pretending something isn’t wrong won’t make it go away.”

“You don’t know anything about it.  And you don’t know anything about me.”

“Nope.  But I do know you’re sitting here ignoring the obvious instead of getting some help.  You look like shit.  JARVIS says you’re not sleeping.”

“Please, sir, do not bring me into this,” the AI whined in a small, sheepish voice.

Steve did appear a little betrayed.  “Would you sleep after somebody strapped you down and–”  His voice failed him and he looked away sharply.  His gaze narrowed on the expensive gray carpet beneath their feet.  Tony’s own irritation melted a bit at seeing the pained look clenching Steve’s face.  He knew something about suffering, about trauma.  He knew what it was like to be tortured.  But as horrible and degrading as that was, this was… different.  Not necessarily worse, but torture of another nature to which he couldn’t quite relate.  What Steve had endured was cold and dehumanizing.  Steve had been reduced to a variable in someone else’s equation.  He’d been forced to submit, denied a choice, denied the power and opportunity to struggle.  Tony had always been able to struggle when the Ten Rings had taken him captive in that cave in the middle of the Afghan mountains.  Admittedly Tony hadn’t seen what had happened in Lahey’s chamber, but the haunted look on Bruce’s face and the helplessness in Steve’s eyes and his own imagination was enough to convince him that this wasn’t over despite everyone’s collective wishful thinking.

Steve looked like he was hurting, like he was on the verge of tears.  The verge of physical and emotional collapse.  Tony stowed his own anger and sighed softly.  “Look, I don’t care what you do.  Go back to SHIELD if you want.  Stay here if you want.  That’s your business.  I’m just passing on the message.”  The miserable expression on Steve’s face was enough to cool his ire even further.  “Hey, screw it, right?  Go get cleaned up and then come and eat.  Pepper’s trying to help, so you might as well just go along with it.  If you haven’t noticed, she likes to control things.”

Steve actually smiled at that and suddenly he didn’t appear so beaten and defeated.  “She’s a nice lady,” he commented.  He looked at Tony squarely.  The tears were gone from his eyes.  “Make sure you appreciate her.”

“I do,” Tony returned.  He tried not to be miffed that he was being reminded of something he already knew (well, in the past he hadn’t been so diligent about making Pepper feel appreciated, but that was the past and he was trying to marry her for God’s sake).  “Since when are you two all BFF?”

“What?  I – I don’t know–”

“What did you do, spend the day shopping and gabbing about One Direction?  No, you know what?  I don’t want to know and I don’t care.”  He did care because he had an increasingly bothersome feeling that the two of them had talked at length, and they had talked about _him_.  “Just put a smile on your face for a few minutes and humor her.  She seems to think talking helps.  Women always think that.  Me, when things go to shit, I concentrate on work.”

Steve’s smile grew rueful, almost fond.  “Howard always used to say that,” he murmured.

Tony definitely did not want to go there.  Anger and hurt burst to life inside him and then settled into a low simmer that he wanted to keep under control.  And that inclination to control it lasted all of a second.  “Well, like father like son.”  The acid in his voice was cutting.  _Good job not letting it get to you._

And Steve immediately took offense.  “He was a good man.  And he was my friend.”

“He was an asshole.  And you’re an asshole for bringing it up.  Let’s just not do this now.  Go get cleaned up.”

Any small modicum of connection that might have been struggling to life between them had just been stomped to death.  A dozen different emotions flickered through Steve’s too bright eyes, not the least of which was anger and grief.  “I said I’m not hungry.  I’m just going to get my things and get out of here.”

Tony winced as Steve turned and started to stalk away.  “No, wait, Cap.  Come on.  Steve!  Don’t be like that.”  Rogers didn’t stop, forcing Tony to set the beer bottles down on the counter before racing across the room to catch up with the other man’s long strides.  That, of course, aggravated his injuries, but he schooled his face against the grimace.  This was bullshit, having to coddle Captain America like this.  Part of him definitely wanted to let Rogers walk, to get rid of him and send him on his way back to SHIELD and be done with this entire mess.  But that didn’t feel right, because Pepper had wanted Steve here.  And what Pepper wanted, Tony tried to get for her.  “Steve!  Stop.  Grow up.”

Rogers turned and flashed Tony an irate glare.  And all of the sudden, he was wavering on his feet.  Tony was too shocked to do anything for what seemed like forever, watching in slow-motion as Captain America staggered and nearly fainted.  “Whoa.  Whoa!”  He grabbed Steve’s arm, Steve’s arm that was so tense he could hardly bend it, and steadied him.  Hazy blue eyes focused on him.  “Alright, no more bullshit.  You need to eat.  And then you need to sleep, like a week’s worth of sleep.  Are you alright?”

“I’m fine!” Steve roared.  “Stop asking!”

“Christ, Rogers, don’t get mad at me.  And you are _not_ fine.  Don’t be such a moron.  Even Captain America needs help after something like this.  Stop acting like a baby and just go see somebody already.”  That wasn’t the right thing to say.  But the filter between his brain and his mouth always shut off during stressful situations.  Steve wrenched his arm away, glaring furiously at Tony.  Tony had never seen Captain America look quite so malevolent.  It was much more than intimidating.  It was frightening, deeply and surprisingly so.  “Just take it easy.”  He couldn’t quite believe it, but he felt threatened.  He felt like he was in danger.  Seriously in danger.  He backed away. 

But in a blink that baleful look was gone like it had never been there, and Steve was wincing again and shrinking back and seemingly crumbling before Stark’s very eyes.  He grunted, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing a hand to his forehead.  Tony swallowed thickly.  “Headache?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said around a breath.  He was stock still.  Something about this didn’t feel right.  Tony couldn’t put his finger on it.  Like the obvious explanation wasn’t quite enough, like this wasn’t just PTSD or nightmares or bad memories.  It was significantly more disturbing than hypervigilance or anxiety or trouble sleeping or even these weird mood swings that seemed to be sweeping over a man who’d had been the rock of virtue just a few days ago.  Something serious was wrong.  In a word, Steve was unstable.

Tony didn’t know if he should help, and even if he should, he didn’t know what to do.  “You want to sit?”

“No, I don’t…”  Steve actually _whimpered_ through his teeth.  He doubled over, looking dizzy and distressed and a breath away from throwing up.  Tony tried to grab him, but the soldier was too big and his own injuries made it too difficult.  He settled for placing what he hoped was a comforting hand on Rogers’ back.

“Don’t touch me!  _Get away from me!_ ”

One second Rogers was bent and troubled and clearly in pain, and the next he was literally in Tony’s face, one powerful hand clenched around his throat and his eyes blazing in rage.  He lifted Tony a good foot off the ground like it was nothing and was across the room in a couple of gigantic steps.  He slammed the inventor against the wall and held him there.  Agony rippled up and down Tony’s belly and panic and terror raced in his heart.  He didn’t understand.  Was this some kind of flashback?  _Oh God!_

But the hand around his throat wasn’t tight.  Threatening, but not strangling.  And despite being held at Roger’s mercy, he wasn’t being hurt.  Steve’s eyes were filled with fire, with anguish and pain but most of all with fury.  He was holding back something very dark and very powerful.  “Don’t you _ever_ touch me again.”

“Steve, please–”

The lights went out.

Tony could hear the power surge a split second before it happened, a loud electrical whine that heralded energy building up rapidly and unsafely.  A bulb popped somewhere.  Appliances shorted.  Now it was shadowy and completely silent.

Steve stared at Tony a moment more, holding his gaze and his body hostage.  As if the dawning realization of what he’d done, of what he was doing, was finally reaching him, the wrathful expression slipped from his face.  He let Tony go.  He stepped back, his eyes widening, his mouth limply falling open in shock.  “Tony, I…”  He was horrified.  His hands shook, and he glanced down at them before returning his gaze back to the man before him.  “I – I’m so sorry.”

Tony didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, because even if he had managed to figure out what to say underneath his own shock and fear, Steve was gone before he could say it.  He swallowed through a dry throat, pushing his own trembling body away from the wall.  He raised his hand to his neck and found it fine, unhurt in fact, but the feel of Steve’s strong fingers pressing and shaking with strength and strain and _so close_ to killing him…  “What the hell?” he whispered.  He rubbed vigorously at his throat just to rid himself of the ghostly, unsettling sensation.

Power was restored within a matter of seconds as the Tower’s self-regulating computer systems recovered.  Tony looked around as the lights blinked back on and the appliances came back to life, whirring and humming softly and thankfully filling the vacuous and hungry quiet.  “JARVIS, what was that?”

“I am not certain, sir.  The power surge did not come from the arc reactor.”  The AI paused a moment.  “All systems are coming back online.  Some are taking longer to reboot.  However, everything seems undamaged.”

 _Undamaged._   Just like his throat.  Tony swallowed again, anticipating pain but there was none.  He was fine.

But Steve clearly wasn’t.  There was something wrong.  No more denying it.  No more trying to hide it or ignore it or rationalize it.  _Something was_ _terribly wrong_.

“Tony?”  Pepper’s voice cut through the whirlwind of his thoughts.  She appeared at the entrance of the dining area.  She had showered, dressed in comfortable jeans and an MIT t-shirt, but she hadn’t finished putting her make-up on and her hair still looked damp.  “What happened?  Is the arc reactor–”

“Did you see what happened?  During the robbery.”  Tony’s words were tight and hard and filled with uncharacteristic worry.

Pepper’s look of concern only grew sharper.  She winced helplessly.  “No, I was back where it was safe.  Steve got me out of the car and then he – what is it?”

“JARVIS, is there footage of the attack?  News video.  YouTube.  Whatever.”

“I am looking, sir.  It will take me a moment to process it.”

Tony was across the room in front of the huge windows where the holographic computer terminal was.  “All those people there.  There’s gotta be some.  And get whatever that bank had for security feeds.  Hurry the hell up.”

Pepper followed him.  She grabbed his arm, confusion splayed across her face.  “What happened?  Where did Steve go?”

“Was he okay today?” Tony asked.  “I mean, before the robbery.”

Pepper nodded, lost and reeling and growing increasingly fearful.  She stammered into an answer.  “Yes.  I mean, he was quiet but he always seems to be quiet.  He looked horrible when we left, but he got better as the day went on.  Why?  Tony?”  She grabbed his arm more forcefully, trying to turn him to face her.  JARVIS was starting to send data to the terminal, videos people had taken of the events on 42nd Street.  Cell phone shots and poor, shaky movies and images of people screaming and smoke and burning cars.  JARVIS was processing them quickly, identifying those with the best views of the incident.  “Tony, what happened?”

“I don’t know yet.  But I need you to stay away from Rogers.”

“What?  Why?”

“We were all wrong,” Tony declared.  “Lahey’s experiment did do something to him.”

Pepper’s face went completely white, and her eyes widened in horror.  “Oh, God.  What?  What is it?  Is he okay?”

“Just go to our penthouse and stay there.  I need to know you’re safe.  If anything happens, you hide in there.  You know how to get Iron Man to you if you need it.”

“Tony–”

“Pep, please.  I’m not screwing around here.  _Go._ ”

She watched him fearfully a second longer.  It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him; they’d gotten past that issue months and months ago.  It was that she didn’t like being pushed aside, didn’t like being dismissed when she was this worried.  However, she nodded and agreed.  He grabbed her hand and kissed her palm once before turning back to the images before him.  Pepper let go of his fingers and walked away quickly.

Tony released a slow sigh, trying to center himself.  “This is all we got?”

“Yes.  What is it you want to find?”

Honestly he didn’t know.  Something, _anything_ , to validate his fears.  Or, better yet, invalidate them, but Tony _knew_ in his heart that he was right.  “Where did Rogers go?” he asked as he started tearing through the videos.

“Biometric sensors are not functional as of yet,” JARVIS responded, “but the elevator stopped on his floor approximately a minute ago.  Shall I summon Doctor Banner or call Director Fury?”

“No and no.  Not until we know what we’re dealing with here.”  If this was as bad as he feared and Steve really had been altered by Lahey’s experiment, combining that absolute unknown with the always variable danger of the Hulk seemed like a really bad idea.  And he didn’t want to involve Fury until he knew for sure something was wrong with Steve because he could trust the master spy about as far as he could throw him and the last thing they needed was SHIELD making this already bad situation worse.

“Those are all of the videos I have been able to locate,” JARVIS said after another moment.  “I have multiple angles of the security footage of the bank robbery.”

“Give me all of them.”

“It would help if you would tell me what it is you are thinking.”

“That kid…”  Tony shook his head, his fingers flying through the display as he quickly analyzed and swiped away images.  “That kid with the family that Steve saved.  He said Cap stopped a bus from crushing them.  He said Steve was so strong he didn’t even use his hands.”

A long moment of tense, incredulous silence followed.  “You cannot suspect…  It is not possible.”

Tony closed his eyes and saw the hatred and fear and agony burning in Steve’s gaze.  The madness simmering.  That hand around his throat.  The power behind it.  The violence behind it.  The lights going out.  Like anger being funneled from a murderous grip into another outlet.  “I hope you’re right,” he said, “because I think Steve’s in a very dark place, and if his emotions are altering the world around him…  Well, that would be bad.”

JARVIS hesitated as if he couldn’t believe what Tony was suggesting.  Maybe he couldn’t.  It was frankly beyond belief.  “Indeed.”

“So let’s figure this out fast because if he loses it, I have a feeling we’re going to have a problem on our hands.”  He spent some time quickly scanning through all the footage, working almost maniacally, and when he came to a black and white security feed from the bank of Captain America expertly and effortlessly taking out the robbers, he watched, transfixed.  As keen and powerful as his brain was, it utterly failed to digest what he saw.

“Holy crap,” he said.  “Did he just…”

“I believe so, sir.”

Tony reached into the holographic display and pulled the video feed to him.  He zoomed in and replayed it.  Once.  Twice.  Four times.  In slow motion.  From different angles.  It was always the same.  It was a section that was little more than a second long of Steve kneeling in front of an armed robber who was holding a woman hostage with a gun to her head.  Tony watched, confused and shocked and alarmed beyond all rational thought, as Steve held out his hand toward a gun that was a good ten feet away from him on the floor.  A gun that just _flew toward him_.  It happened so fast.  And with that gun firmly in his hand, Steve stood and shot the man in the head.

“Yeah, we have a problem,” Tony whispered.  “A really, _really_ big problem.”


	8. Chapter 8

The super soldier serum wasn’t turning out to be the stabilizing agent Bruce had hoped.

He wasn’t sure why, exactly, just that it wasn’t conferring the protective barrier against Extremis’ more catastrophic side-effects that he thought it would have.  It might have been that he hadn’t properly extracted a good enough sample from Steve’s blood.  Bruce had known that that was going to be a difficult task and a serious issue.  The serum wasn’t simply some chemical floating around in Steve’s body.  It was completely ingrained into every part of him, in all of his cells from blood to bone to muscle to neuron.  It was part of his DNA, and that made it an extremely complicated and arduous task to even determine where the man ended and the serum began.  As Bruce labored day and night over this project, he wondered if Doctor Erskine had had any concept of how his experiment would fundamentally alter human biology, how very deeply the serum would interact with Steve’s body.  Modern genetics hadn’t come of age until after Project: Rebirth, though the rough idea of DNA had been present before then.  Still, the technology to truly _see_ the effects the serum had on a chemical, cellular level hadn’t existed back then.  And the technology to isolate it didn’t exist today.  Recreating it truly was a Holy Grail of biomedical research, an unattainable pursuit that had driven many men both good and bad, and he should have known better.  He should have remembered how fruitless this was.  No matter how hard he labored and thought and worked and struggled, he couldn’t isolate a pure sample.

So there was that.  But what he had developed was fairly similar, a decent derivative as far as he could tell.  And even that wasn’t cutting it.  He’d integrated it into his plant serum (which was another problem in and of itself because the super soldier serum and Extremis seemed to react fairly strongly to each other and not in a way that was beneficial to either).  He’d still managed to balance his serum derivative with Extremis and infused the result into his plants.  And it worked.  Somewhat.  This latest crop had survived longer, at any rate, the longest of any.  They grew fast and bloomed verdantly, producing fruit larger and lusher than he’d seen before, but they’d still died when the Extremis reaction grew too violent and out of control.  He stared angrily at the latest smoldering mess.  The plant had seemed entirely healthy a few minutes ago, and then in a second it had burned to death, leaving a scorched pot and burned soil and a few flakes of ash.  There was too much excess heat.  Excess energy.  The serum had stymied it, fought it off for a while, but it hadn’t been enough.  And now Bruce sat, once again at a loss, wondering if this whole thing wasn’t fundamentally flawed.  The super soldier serum couldn’t be parsed from the man, at least not to the extent where it was usable.  Everything he’d tried had failed.  He didn’t want to think about that beyond this silly experiment because the implications were vast and disturbing.

Bruce sighed, letting all of his frustration and disappointment out on the long, cleansing breath, and leaned back in his chair.  His back hurt from sitting hunched over the lab bench and his computer all day (who was he kidding?  For the last few days).  He rolled his head, trying to relieve a stubborn kink in his neck.  Maybe now would be a good time to surrender.  He felt like he hadn’t even seen Tony in days (although he was pretty certain he’d seen the other man at lunch time, hadn’t he?), and he was in desperate need of a real meal and a shower and a shave and sleep.  He’d been obsessed – there really wasn’t any other word for it – with trying to make this work.  And he’d been ashamed – there really wasn’t any other word for that, either – because he was doing all of this without Steve’s knowledge.  He knew Steve had been back to see Doctor Wright as Wright had contacted him a few times over the last couple of weeks with additional test results and additional blood and tissue and CSF samples.  Bruce didn’t know if Wright had told Rogers that he was sharing his data with him.  He certainly couldn’t have told Steve what Bruce was doing with it because Bruce hadn’t had the guts to tell anyone, not even Tony.

It was wrong, and he damn well knew it.  What he was doing violated any number of ethical research principles.  And it hadn’t started out this way.  He’d done as he’d promised.  He’d looked over Steve’s data carefully, searching for clues as to what Dan’s drug had done, but there’d been nothing to find.  Everything was completely normal.  Blood panels.  DNA results.  CSF markers.  No sign of aberrant cell behavior, metabolism, or growth.  No sign of radiation damage.  Steve was completely healthy.  And after assuring himself and Wright of that, temptation had reared its ugly head.  It had always been there, but he’d ignored it for days, focusing on returning to his research and doing what he was supposed to do.  However, as he’d realized back after the interrogation at SHIELD Headquarters, Dan was right about him.  Over time his resistance had waned.  He wasn’t strong enough to not know, to be satisfied with the leaving the problem unsolved, and one thing had quickly become another.  He was just going to examine the serum.  He was just going to investigate it further, to try to figure out how the serum had saved Steve’s life, how resilient it truly was.  He was just going to see how the serum would react when healthy cells were exposed to Extremis.  He was just going to see if Extremis and the serum could be spliced together somehow.  And now he was here, deeply buried in this problem with no answers to show for it, drowning in his questions and knowing full well he should come up for air.  Obsession.  God, it was a weakness.

But this was going to end itself because he’d run out of blood samples.  Bruce didn’t know if Wright was satisfied this was all over and had simply stopped sending them or if Steve had stopped going to see him.  The reason why was moot.  He’d used everything he’d been given.  The only way to get more would be to ask Steve, and he could never do that.   He couldn’t before, back when Rogers had been nothing more than an acquaintance, his captain for a fateful moment when aliens and hellfire had descended upon New York.  Now Rogers had been victimized by Dan and nearly killed.  The inappropriateness of asking someone who’d been through what Steve had been through to submit to more testing aside, this was all too close to the tight grip of shame that never quite let go of Bruce’s heart.  Maybe he hadn’t been the perpetrator, but he’d been a participant nonetheless.  He hadn’t even begun to think about it, to come to terms with it.  That was another reason he’d so willingly given into this quest.  It distracted him from things he couldn’t stand to acknowledge, let alone accept.    There was a lot of guilt pent up in that, guilt he wasn’t strong enough to face.  When his science had failed before, he’d been the one destroyed by it.  This time he’d failed, and Rogers had died because of it.  Maybe he was okay now, but just because it had turned out alright didn’t negate what had happened.

No, asking Steve for more blood was strictly out of the question.

So this was going to be it.  The last of his failed attempts to make Extremis do more than just burn.  Bruce took off his glasses and set them to the workbench tiredly and rubbed his eyes.  It was so damn hard to let things go.  He’d never been able to do it.  Not when he’d been a kid or a student.  Not when he’d worked for Ross.  Even now, even as his heart told his head that asking anything of Steve was completely immoral, his head was trying to find ways to justify it to his heart.  It was just science.  Science was blind and fair and pure.  Maybe Steve would see that.  Maybe he would understand that _good_ could come of this.  If he could make plants that survived indefinitely and produced hardier and healthier fruit at accelerated rates and in massive quantities… that was a wonderful thing.  Maybe he could convince Steve to help him.

Maybe if Steve helped him, he could fix everything that he had done to himself.

“Doctor Banner?”

Bruce jerked forward in his chair and hastily cleared his laptop screen of his recent data and simulations.  Awkward shock coursed over him like he’d been caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t be doing (because he was frankly).  His skin felt tingly and uncomfortable and a cold sweat immediately broke out on his lower back.  It was as if fate or God or whatever powers that were had read his mind and decided to show him what a stupid moron he was by shoving the opportunity to get what he wanted right before his nose and letting him flounder.  So pathetic.  “Hi, Steve,” he said, clearing his throat a little because it felt like something was wedged in it.  He tried to seem busy, pulling up his word processor and typing mindlessly on an abstract he was working on for another paper on neutron decay.  “What’s up?”

Bruce felt more than saw Steve tentatively come closer because he refused to look up.  It was really childish, but he sort of felt like if he just didn’t make eye contact, Rogers would leave.  “I really need to talk to you.”

“Now’s not a good time actually.  I’m kinda in the middle of something.”  God, he could be an ass when it suited him.

Steve was silent as he hesitated.  For a brief second, Bruce hoped he’d thwarted what was surely going to be some sort of awkward conversation about what had happened.  But he hadn’t.  “Doctor Banner, please.”

There was something strained in the faint words.  Bruce glanced up over the top of his laptop and looked at Steve.  And all his selfish nervousness and reluctance faded to alarm.  “Whoa.  Hey.  Are you alright?”

The man before him seemed nothing like a super soldier, nothing like a SHIELD agent.  Nothing like Captain America.  He was freshly showered, but his usually neatly combed hair was askew and his clothes were disheveled, like he’d just thrown them on without caring at all about it.  He was so pale and his eyes were dark with exhaustion.  He was grimacing, shaking.  It was hardly perceptible, this minor tremor in his tall, muscular frame, but Bruce saw it clear as day.  “Bruce, I…”  Steve looked away.  Bruce stood from his chair, worry creasing his brow.  “I – I need your help.”

Any hesitation faded from Bruce’s mind as he rounded the workbench and approached the taller man.  Something about Steve seemed raw and uncontrolled.  Something was wrong.  “Yeah.  Yeah, sure.  Come on and sit down.”

Steve remained stiff as though he was having second thoughts about what he was doing.  Bruce watched him for a moment but tried not to stare.  Finally Steve relented, and he sagged and walked around the lab bench to sit in another chair.  He was shivering more noticeably now, scrubbing his hands down his face.  Even though laying a comforting hand on his shoulder seemed a good, friendly thing to do, Bruce didn’t feel sure enough to touch him.  “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted.  He dropped his hands from in front of his face and rubbed them methodically up and down his jeans before clasping his knees.  He was jittery.  Steve was always so calm, so still, so collected.  Bruce didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was, it was serious.  “I just…”  His face crumpled.  “I think…  I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“What do you mean?”

Steve swallowed thickly.  “I can’t sleep.”  Bruce said nothing, waiting patiently for him to continue.  “I try, but I’m having these dreams…”

He wasn’t that kind of a doctor.  He wasn’t someone who could listen to other people’s problems (especially problems borne from _this_ situation), and he was about to stop Steve right there and suggest he see a psychiatrist.  And experiencing nightmares after what they’d gone through was normal.  He’d had them, too.  But he didn’t send Steve away because whatever was bothering the younger man went well beyond _normal_.  He could see that right away.  Steve was _terrified_.  “What sort of dreams?”

“Violent.”  Steve closed his eyes and winced, as if the mere mention of what he was enduring was too much.  He let out a slow, shaking breath.  “Horrifying.  They’re so real, like memories almost, but they’re not.  They’re not real.”  He shook his head, his shoulders slumped and his pallor striking.  “I keep having to remind myself of that.”

He didn’t say anything further until Bruce prompted him.  “How long has this been going on?”

Steve squinted like he couldn’t think or couldn’t remember.  “A week maybe?  I don’t know.”

Bruce chewed the inside of his lip, his mind racing as he tried to recall the last time he’d seen Steve.  Had he looked this distressed?  Suddenly he felt completely disconnected, embarrassingly so. Apparently Captain America had been deteriorating right in front of his eyes, and he hadn’t noticed.  Tony probably hadn’t noticed.  Pepper had been gone.  What the hell sort of friends were they?  Steve did a damn good job of hiding things, but he should have realized that from the exchange in the SHIELD infirmary after they’d been rescued from Dan and done what he could to stop it.  Furthermore, if Steve was the type of person who kept his problems to himself, the fact that he was here lent even more credence to this being a serious matter _._ “Anything else bothering you?”

Steve hesitated again.  “I’ve been having these headaches.”

That was more alarming.  “Since the incident?”

“A little after.”

The serum should have prevented him from experiencing everyday human discomforts, headaches included.  He should have told someone right away.  “How bad are they?”

“They weren’t at first,” Steve answered softly, “but now…”  He dropped his chin and stared at his hands, his hands that were clenched so tightly in his jeans that his knuckles were white.  Bruce realized why he had looked away when he saw a droplet of liquid splash against his thigh.  Steve shuddered, shaking his head as he wiped at his eyes.  “I can’t stand it anymore.  I don’t like to complain, but I can’t think sometimes it’s so painful.  And I tried to convince myself that this was okay, but… I know something’s wrong with me.”

Concern continued to rise up sharply in Bruce’s chest until his heart was pumping faster and harder and he had to remind himself to stay calm.  His worry about touching the other man dissipated, and he laid a gentle hand on Steve’s shoulder.  Seeing Captain America cry, even if it was only a few wayward tears that were quickly wiped away, wasn’t something he’d ever even remotely imagined witnessing.  Offering up comfort wasn’t a strong suit of his, particularly since the birth of the Hulk, but letting this go on obviously wasn’t an option.  The man before him looked devastated, _tortured_ , and desperately afraid.  Whatever hell through which he’d been silently suffering was destroying him, and he needed help.  “Okay, Steve.  It’s okay.  Take it easy.  Nightmares and migraines don’t necessarily mean something’s wrong with you, alright?  Let’s not leap to conclusions.”  His mind was racing with fleeting thoughts and possibilities as he reached for one of the many tablet computers strewn about the lab.  He pulled up Steve’s medical information with a few taps to the touch screen.  Maybe the headaches could have been caused by the Gamma radiation, but the previous CT scans had come back tumor free and cancer was improbable with the protective effects of the serum.  And maybe–

“What are you doing?”  Teary blue eyes fearfully regarded him. 

“Taking notes.”

“No.  No notes.  Please, Bruce.”

“It’s important to keep a log of things.  If on the off chance there is a problem, we should document what you’re–”

“I said no!”  The tablet suddenly flew from his hands as though it had been physically wrenched away.  One second he’d felt smooth glass and plastic in his fingers, and the next he was grasping air.  The tablet was thrown across the room onto another workbench with a loud clatter.  It slid across the surface and fell to the opposite side.  The sound of it shattering was loud and it echoed through the lab.

Bruce could hardly believe it.  Steve was breathing heavily.  He lowered his right hand, his eyes narrowed.  Bruce noticed that they were bright as though Steve was running a fever, and sweat was shining on his temples.  “Uh…” he stammered, backpedaling slightly.  He glanced in utter horror between workbench feet away from them and Steve’s white face.  “How…  What…” 

“Something’s _wrong_ with me,” Steve insisted.

Bruce stared.  He couldn’t make himself accept what had just happened.  The silence was heavy and thick with tension, filled with only the hum of the Tower and his own thundering heart.  He forced himself to breathe.  He was lost and reeling and wondering what in the world was going on.  This defied every law of physics and nature he knew and trusted.  “How, um…  When did this start?”

Steve dropped his hand into his lap.  “Today.  And it’s getting worse.”

“How did you…”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you try to do it again?”  Bruce took another tablet from one of the other workbenches and set it on the table beside his laptop.  “Move it to me.”

He watched in worry as Steve reluctantly did as he requested.  The soldier looked to the table, focusing on the tablet where it idly rested.  Those bright blue eyes narrowed again.  A second dragged by.  Then a few more.  Nothing happened.  Steve was shaking now, well and truly, his face taut with effort and concentration and pain.  The pain was rapidly outpacing the other things.  He flung out his right hand, as though physical motion could move the tablet across the room, but it didn’t.  Then he gasped and sagged in the chair and choked on his next few ragged breaths.  He buried his face in his hands and wavered like he was about to pass out.  “I can’t!  I can’t!”

Bruce quickly stepped closer.  “Okay.  It’s okay.  Easy.”

“God, it hurts,” Steve moaned.  He roughly wiped his eyes again and drove his fingers into the mess of his damp hair, fighting to catch his breath.

“Easy,” Bruce shushed.  Despite how much this normally made him uncomfortable, he crouched in front of Steve, laying his hands on the other man’s knees.  “Where does your head hurt?  Can you show me?  Can you describe it?  Give me your hand.”

Steve complied, and Bruce quickly counted his pulse.  It was racing, dangerously so.  This wasn’t right.  The serum should have prevented this sort of stress reaction.  At least, he believed it should have.  The serum had brought Steve to the very pinnacle of human perfection, taking him far beyond the normal physiological reactions to injury so that they were greatly diminished in intensity or short lived.  But that was what they knew in regards to physical injury _._   This wasn’t physical.  His mind was racing so fast that he didn’t notice for a second that Steve hadn’t answered him.  He looked up and found the man breathing through what seemed to be agony.  “Steve?  Tell me about the pain.  Where is it?”

“All over,” Steve managed through gritted teeth.  “Like… somebody’s drivin’ spikes in my brain.  I just want it to stop.”

“Did it get worse when you tried to move the pad?”  Steve nodded.  _Obviously the pain’s related to the telekinesis.  And whatever else is wrong with him.  Obviously.  And obviously he can’t consciously control it._   “Look in my eyes.”  Steve did for the first time since right after all of this had happened.  His pupils were hugely dilated.  Something about them didn’t look right, but Bruce couldn’t put his finger on it.  Like they were flooded with emotion and memory.  He didn’t know how else to describe it.  “Follow my finger.”  Steve did, but it was sluggish, once again as if he couldn’t concentrate.  “What else?  Tell me everything, even if you don’t think it’s relevant.”

Steve didn’t say anything as Bruce stood.  He laid his hand across Rogers’ forehead.  Steve flinched away from his touch; they both noticed it immediately, and Bruce froze and Steve tried to force himself to relax.  Bruce noted he was warm, but not seriously so.  _No fever._   He slid his hands down the side of Steve’s face to the lymph nodes in his neck and palpated them.  They were fine.  _No infection, though with the serum that’s not likely anyway.  But then none of this is likely.  I should run the blood panels anyway._   Then he experimentally touched Steve’s head, weaving his fingers through the other man’s hair to examine his skull.  _No obvious signs of trauma or swelling._   God, he wished there was.  And drugs (although with Steve’s personality that was unlikely to begin with) were out of the question, given the serum’s resistance to their effects.  _Any_ of these explanations was infinitely better than what he feared was the case.  _What did Dan say?  The experiment would augment cerebral capacity.  Increase synaptic efficiency.  Maximize neurologic output.  Rewire the brain._

_Expand his mind._

_Oh, God._   He shook himself from his frantic thoughts.  “Come on, Steve.  Talk to me.  This is important.  What else?”

“I’ve been remembering things I…”  Steve faltered.  He grimaced again, but he seemed more in control of himself, like the pain had receded to something he could tolerate.  “I haven’t thought about some of it for years, and it’s like it just happened.  I usually remember things with a lot of clarity, but this is – it’s like I’m _there_ again.  I’m dreaming about it, thinking about it…  Even when I’m awake.  I feel like someone’s in my head and digging through it.”

There was something raw and violated in his voice.  Bruce didn’t want to get personal, but there was no way around it.  “Good memories or bad ones?”

Steve stared at him as if trying to gauge whether or not he was trustworthy.  “There are good ones,” he said, “but it’s mostly bad.”

“Any hallucinations?”

Steve looked ashamed of himself.  “I don’t know,” he quietly admitted.  “Everything’s a blur.  When I went out with Pepper today, it got better for a while.  I felt fine.  But it’s been worse since…  Since I…”  He didn’t finish.  His eyes focused suddenly and he looked up at Bruce.  “He did something to me.”

Bruce couldn’t argue.  He couldn’t lie.  But he could try to fix it.  He _needed_ to fix it.  “We have to go where I can look you over more thoroughly,” he gently declared.  “Back to SHIELD.”

Steve’s eyes widened and the color drained further from his already pale cheeks.  Whatever calm he’d found was dashed.  “No.  I can’t.”

“You need a CT scan.  MRIs.  Blood work.  A full physical.  Things I can’t do for you here.”

“I don’t want to,” Steve said harshly.  He was becoming agitated, and he was up and out of the chair like he needed to run and escape before Bruce could stop him.  Bruce felt his own fear rise at seeing the terrified, angry expression claiming Steve’s face.  “I can’t.  I don’t want anyone doing anything to me.”

Sickening realization rushed over Bruce, twisting his stomach.  He swallowed his nausea and his mounting frustration.  For how _okay_ Steve had acted about what had happened to him, Bruce knew right then and there that it had all been a lie.  “Steve, nobody is going to hurt you.  And nobody is going to force you to do anything.  But you need help.”  Steve looked like a deer caught in headlights.  Bruce raised his hands harmlessly.  “If you don’t want me to run the tests, that’s fine.”  It wasn’t fine, but he could deal with the hurt and the guilt later.  “Doctor Wright can do it.  But I need you to trust me when I tell you that it needs to be done.  You obviously trusted me enough to come to me, right?”

Steve didn’t look convinced.  He was trembling and shaking his head.  “I don’t trust you,” he said.

“Steve–”

Steve stepped closer and suddenly that frightened, pained look was gone from his face and his eyes were dark and teeming with rage.  “I don’t trust you,” he seethed.  Something shattered behind Bruce.  More things burst, glasses and vials, and the screen of his laptop broke.  The huge windows that spanned from the floor to the ceiling all around the lab cracked loudly.  Terror reared inside Bruce, and with that the beast stirred.  Steve moved closer, undaunted despite who he was threatening.  That look in his eyes grew sharper, more dangerous.  “Why should I?  You did this to me.”

Bruce fought to keep himself calm, to stand still and not react.  The Hulk pushed up against him again, a low, rumbling growl echoing across his mind that was eager to break loose, but he ignored it.  That tantalizing desire to _let go_ teased through his thoughts, but he ignored it.  The enormity of how _bad_ this was hit him hard and fast.  “Easy, Steve,” he said, forcing his tone to be gentle and soft.  “Take it easy.  You know that’s not true.”  He tried to be sure, to force some measure of bravado to strengthen his voice because hearing that accusation from Steve cut straight to his heart.  “Just stay calm.  Whatever you’re feeling is overpowering you.  Your emotions are getting the better of you.  It’s not your fault, but you need to fight it.  You need to stay calm.  It’s alright.  Easy.”

The scariest part of it was that Steve _did_ seem calm, murderously so, even though his eyes burned bright with fury.  What sort of nightmare did he see when he looked at Bruce?  Nothing more than the man who’d strapped him to a table and experimented on him and done _this_ to him?  Bruce couldn’t think about that now.  The air veritably cracked with power.  The windows creaked.  The lights dimmed.  What the hell was causing him to do this?  How was it possible?  Whatever it was, it was extremely dangerous.  _Steve was extremely dangerous._   Bruce needed to get Rogers to calm down somehow…

He sucked in a deep breath and opened his hands to Steve again, trying to show he wasn’t a threat and praying that was enough compared to whatever monster Steve perceived him to be.  “You know I’m not going to hurt you.  I just want to make the pain better, alright?  Think, okay?  Just take a deep breath and think.  Don’t let your emotions control you.”

Ironic, coming from him.  Steve obviously thought so as well because he barked out a rough laugh that turned into an equally rough sob and backed away.  He turned, nearly stumbling on his feet.  Bruce barely kept his own legs steady beneath him his relief was so strong.  “God help me,” Steve whispered, his shoulders shaking.  “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

Bruce rushed forward, chancing that a comforting hug would be okay.  He wrapped his arms around the taller man, guiding him back to the chair and helping him sit.  Steve was really shaking now, and his face was twisted with suffering.   He looked dizzy, and Bruce kept a solid hand on his shoulder while reaching for an unopened bottle of water on the lab bench.  “Here.  Just sip this and breathe.  We’re going to get you through this.”

The door to the lab slid open.  Bruce jolted in alarm, ripping around to see Tony walk inside the room.  He looked pale and troubled as well.  Steve saw him too and immediately stiffened under Bruce’s hands.  Muscles as hard as rock twisted and flexed beneath his fingers.  “Stay calm,” Bruce softly reminded.  “It’s just Tony.”

Tony tentatively came closer.  He shared a questioning, worried glance with Bruce.  His gaze strayed to the dripping mess spreading across the counters and floors and the broken glass all over.  He didn’t seem surprised.  Bruce silently prayed Tony would keep his sarcasm to himself; usually it rubbed Steve the wrong way, and this situation was about as far from usual as they could get.  Bruce managed half a smile, keeping the tension from his face and voice and body, as he patted Steve’s shoulder tenderly.  “Cap seems to have… um, gained some new talents.”

Steve gave another hoarse laugh at that.  The water bottle nearly ruptured as he subconsciously squeezed it and twisted it in his hands.  Tony slowly approached, keeping his eyes squarely on Rogers.  Bruce realized immediately that the other man already knew that something was wrong with Steve, and that led him to wonder what had gone on that day that had started all of this.  “Yeah, noticed,” Tony commented.  “Like pulling a gun ten feet through the air toward your hand with your mind.”  Steve winced, and Bruce closed his eyes wearily for a second.  _Oh, hell…  What happened?_   There was no time to ask.  He shook his head at Stark, praying his friend heeded him.  This was all upsetting, and upsetting Steve was the last thing they needed.  But Tony went on.  There wasn’t a hint of accusation or heat in his tone, though.  “Or blowing out the Tower’s power system.  Or making my lab look like a tornado hit it.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said.

“I don’t care about any of that,” Tony said firmly.  There wasn’t a hint of mirth in his brown eyes, and his lips were tight with a concerned frown.  He was serious in a way that was unusual for him.  “We need to get you some place safe.”

Steve stiffened again.  “Safe for me?” he asked tersely.  “Or safe _from_ me?”

Tony folded his arms over his chest and leaned his hip into one of the lab benches.  Bruce felt the situation deteriorating again, so he kept his hand on Steve’s shoulder like the contact could anchor him.  “You’re the one who almost choked me a little while ago,” Tony said.  Again the words were without spite, but even as inflectionless as they were they were still provocative.

Shock coursed over Bruce.  He looked down at the man beside him, really afraid at how quickly this could spiral from their control.  Steve and Tony didn’t get along, but he knew there was no force in the universe that could make Captain America raise his hand in anger against an innocent man, let alone against a teammate.  Steve’s moods were shifting so quickly, though, that Bruce didn’t know what to expect.  If he’d attacked Tony before, he’d likely do it again.

But he didn’t.  He just lowered his head into his hands again and drove his fingers back into his hair.  It was like being directly confronted about what had happened had finally pushed him into seeing reason.  Into surrender.  “I didn’t mean to.  I swear.  I can’t control it,” he admitted.  His voice cracked with despair.  “I’m trying, but I can’t.”

“It’s alright.  It’s not your fault.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“We don’t know, Steve,” Bruce said.  “But Tony’s right.  We need to get you some place safe, some place where we can figure out how to help you.”

Steve sighed, his breath quivering as though he was trying his hardest not to cry.  “Okay,” he whispered.

That was enough for Bruce.  “Just sit tight with Tony for a second, okay?  I’m going to get something to help.”  Steve looked up at him, clearly afraid, so Bruce squeezed his shoulder and smiled as best he could again before turning and walking from the lab.  Tony was calling after him, confused and maybe afraid as well, but he ignored it, trying to seem calm and nonchalant and composed.  Once the doors closed behind him, he ran as fast as he could.  He thundered down the hall toward the elevator and charged inside.  “JARVIS?  Take me to my floor.  Hurry!”  The lift immediately began to move.  Bruce couldn’t be sure, but it felt faster than normal.  “What’s Rogers doing?”

“Captain Rogers has not moved, Doctor Banner,” the AI responded.  “He is calm at the moment.”

“You let me know the minute it seems like he’s getting agitated.”

“Perhaps leaving him with Mr. Stark was not wise,” JARVIS said.  Bruce knew that, of course.  The doors opened on his floor and he sprinted down the nicely decorated hall toward his suite.  JARVIS opened the door for him, and he barreled inside.

“No choice,” Bruce gasped as he dug inside his dresser.  He finally pulled the black, plastic case out from underneath his underwear and set it atop his dresser.  He’d been carting this around for a couple of years.  He’d developed the dendrotoxin for himself, hoping it would prove useful in stopping the Hulk if he could ever catch himself mid-transformation.  He rarely could, and when he did it didn’t help at all.  But hopefully it would be enough to sedate Steve, at least for a short while.  There wasn’t much, just two injections, and Bruce frankly had no idea how quickly Steve’s body would metabolize it.  But it was all they had.  He snatched the case up and sprinted to the elevator.

As he ran back to his lab, a thousand horrifying thoughts raced through his head.  “JARVIS, how’s it going?”

“Well enough,” the AI responded.

 _Thank God._   He burst through the door and tried to catch his breath.  Both Steve and Tony immediately looked to him.  Rogers was still sitting in the chair and Stark was still leaning against the workbench.  Neither of them looked to have even twitched.  They stared at him like he was crazy.  Maybe he was.

How the hell were they going to get Steve to allow them to inject him with this?

He obviously wasn’t entirely rational, and whatever newfound powers he had were uncontrollable and unpredictable.  What they really needed was time to study this, and Steve didn’t seem interested in cooperating.  And Tony was right: they had to get him some place safe.  They needed to contain this before it got out of control.  Some part of his brain shriveled at that logic, at how cold and uncaring it was, but it was true.  He could only hope he could convince Steve to see it that way.  And he didn’t want to pray for another man’s suffering, but he sincerely hoped the pain was severe enough that Steve would want to sleep.

Steve’s frightened face immediately doused his hopes.  He glanced at the case in Bruce’s hand.  “What is that?”  Bruce looked to Tony.  He probably shouldn’t have.  That set Steve even more on edge, and he was up and out of the chair again.  This was very bad.  “What?  What are you gonna do to me?”

“Just stay calm, okay?” Bruce said softly, lifting his hand again and trying to follow his own advice.  “I have some medicine with me that will take away the pain so you can sleep.  And it’ll be a deep sleep.  No nightmares.”

Steve was shaking again.  In terror.  Bruce’s heart ached at the sight of it.  “I don’t want to sleep,” he returned, warily darting his gaze between Tony and Bruce.  “I’m just – I’m gonna go.  I shouldn’t have bothered you.  I’m fine.  I’ll work it out.”

Tony was incredulous, and Bruce could see the urge to say something sharp dancing in his eyes.  “Work it out?  This isn’t something you can ignore.”

“Steve, listen.  You said before you just want the pain to end.  Well, this will definitely take it away for a while.”  Steve was panicked.  He wasn’t thinking clearly enough for any of that to register.  All he saw was another man approaching him with a drug.  All he saw was another man trying to hurt him.  Whatever Dan’s procedure had done to him was greatly amplifying his feelings of fear and anger and pain.

And his feelings of fear and anger and pain were triggering the telekinesis.

Maybe it would be a better idea to back off.

Bruce stopped moving.  He set the case to the floor.  “Alright,” he said softly, ridding his own voice of anything except compassion.  “We won’t do it.  But can you take a seat?  Let me look you over again.  Will you let me take some readings?”  With what, Bruce didn’t know.  He wasn’t lying when he’d told Steve he didn’t have the equipment to do the necessary tests on hand.  But any reason to calm Rogers down and get him to sit again was a good one, even if it was nonsense.

Steve was like a cornered animal.  Both Tony and Bruce were keeping their distance, but he regarded each of them like a threat.  He didn’t sit.  If he wouldn’t let them near, there wasn’t much they could do.  Newfound powers aside, he still was much stronger and faster than both of them combined.  They couldn’t force him, not without Tony’s suit and without the Hulk.  _Please let this not come to that…_

Control was slipping away from their grasping fingers, both Steve’s control over his emotions and Tony and Bruce’s control over the situation.  Bruce could hardly breathe.  “Cap,” Tony said, moving closer.  “Come on.  We’re not going to hurt you.  Whatever’s going on in your head that’s got you all messed up isn’t real.”

Steve stepped back further.  He hit one of the benches with his hip hard enough to shake it before darting around the edge.  “Stay away from me,” he ordered.

“Why?” Tony asked in exasperation.  “We just want to give you something to help you relax.  Take the edge off of it.  Bruce is right; if you’re in pain, something’s wrong.”  Tony rolled his eyes a little.  “Well, more than the obvious.  Come on.  Don’t make us–”

“Don’t make you what?” Steve snarled.  “Force me?  Hold me down?”

Tony sighed slowly, sharing a look with Bruce.  He shrugged a little.  “Yes.  We will if we have to.  But I don’t want to.  I _really_ don’t want to.  So let’s just not do it.  Just cooperate.  It’ll be easier on everyone.”

“Easier?”  Steve’s expression opened in alarm, in realization of how far this could go, in realization of what Tony was threatening.  A second later it tightened in rage.  “You stay the hell away!” he shouted.

“Calm down,” Bruce pleaded.  “Nobody is forcing anyone to do–”

“No!  I’m not going to let you drug me!”

“Steve–”

And that was it.  He was going to run.

“Now, J!”  The rear wall of the lab burst open and flashes of red and gold streaked into the room.  Tony stood still as Iron Man encased him, the pieces of the armor wrapping around his body almost faster than Bruce could see.  Iron Man’s white eyes were aglow after the metal mask slid down over Tony’s face.  “Now come on.  Let’s not do this.”

But it was already done.  Tony hardly had the words out of his mouth before Steve narrowed his eyes and swung his arm out.  Iron Man was flung from his feet as though battered by an invisible force and thrown across the room.  Bruce ducked as Tony flew past him in a blur and smashed through the wall on the other side of the room.  Steve groaned in pain, closing his fist and yanking his hand down and bringing the ceiling crashing to the floor on top of Tony.  The roar of shattering sheet rock and bending metal and breaking glass resounded through the lab.  Steve glanced at Bruce, and his expression was unreadable.  Then he turned and bolted.

The enormity of what had just happened left Bruce reeling.  He heard Tony shifting in the wreckage, and Iron Man rose from the debris, drywall dust covering the gleaming surface of his suit.  “Damn it,” he said.  “JARVIS, lock down the Tower!”

“I am quite certain locks will not prevent Captain Rogers from escaping,” JARVIS reminded.

Tony glared at Bruce.  “What the hell?  Maybe bringing out drugs wasn’t a good idea?”

Bruce bristled, his own patience all but worn away.  “Like bringing out your suit was?”

Iron Man stalked after Rogers.  When he realized he was alone, he turned his glower back to Bruce.   “You planning on helping?  Come on!”

“I’m not sure I should let out the Other Guy,” Bruce returned hotly, although if things kept escalating like this it might become unavoidable.  The thought of it was distressing.  He quickly picked the case up from the floor and stumbled to a bench.  He set it down and opened the lid.  The two capped syringes were still inside, thankfully undamaged.

“We need him!” Tony insisted.  “This is beyond salvaging.  And Rogers and I are pretty evenly matched when he’s not all hyped up on super brain powers.  I can’t take him alone.”  It took a lot for Stark to ever admit he wasn’t enough to handle a situation.  “Can that stuff bring him down?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce confessed.  He was trying hard to keep his own emotions in check as he pulled the syringes from the case.  He crossed the room and handed them to Stark.  “I think it should, but–”

“Feel bad about it later,” Iron Man snapped.  He took the needles from Bruce.  “Stop him now before he hurts himself or someone else.”

“Tony, we can’t–”

“Sir, Captain Rogers is attempting to head down the Tower.  He is in the west stairwell.  If he gets out–”

“I know!”  Those glowing eyes stared at Bruce, unwavering.  “We need the Hulk.”

Bruce hesitated a moment more.  This was not what he wanted.  This was _never_ what he wanted.  It had been more than a year since he’d released the monster from its cage, and this was twice in two weeks.  And if the Hulk injured Steve, even accidentally, he’d never be able to forgive himself.  But Tony was right.  He closed his eyes and let go.

* * *

Bruce never had much control.  The first time there had been none.  Since then, he’d found ways to keep himself _intact_ (if that was the term for it – honestly, it was hard to describe) when his body was no longer his own.  He’d found ways to feel what was happening, to know beyond the wall of rage that kept him from himself and burned and blurred his world.  Since then, he’d learned that if he stayed just a little angry all the time he could hang onto himself.  Control was definitely too  strong a word for it.  Maybe consciousness was, too.  But he was _there_ , not blown into oblivion, not overwhelmed and held captive in a prison without sight and sound and touch until the Hulk was calm again.  Now it was more of an inversion, a role reversal.  He was the thorn in the Hulk’s mind and not the other way around.  And this thorn had a singular message, and he said it over and over and over again until it sunk in.

_Don’t hurt him._

The monster breathed heavily against the whisper, muscles bulging and heart thundering and frustration driving him.  But that thought was strong.  _Don’t hurt him.  Don’t.  Don’t hurt him._

The Hulk grunted, unappreciative of Bruce’s command, but he would heed it.  Bruce forced memories to the surface, brought them up through the pulsing storm of anger.  Memories of Captain America, clad in red and white and blue with his shield shining.  They’d fought together, the Hulk and this man.  It had been some time ago, but the Hulk needed to remember that this man was his comrade.  This man was his captain. _You know him.  Steve.  A friend._

A calm thought.  A simple thought.  Something the Hulk could understand and obey.  _Don’t hurt him._

And the Hulk listened.

The monster was tearing through the 31st floor of Stark Tower, racing to reach the west stairwell.  He exploded into the concrete chamber and jumped down, smashing and destroying as he went, the massive bulk of his body and strength causing the steps to crumple.  He grasped the wall, fingers gouging sturdy cement like it was nothing, sliding down fast until he spotted the man.  _Steve.  Don’t hurt him._   The Hulk growled in an irate response to his reminder, slowing his descent.  _Steve.  Grab him.  Don’t hurt him._   Steve’s eyes widened.  He flung himself to the side to avoid the Hulk as he landed on one of the platforms outside a lower floor.  His face was bathed in sweat.  The Hulk growled again, outside and in, and reached his massive hand towards Steve.

Steve backpedaled.  _Easy.  Easy._ The Hulk fought to restrain himself, to ignore that driving desire to smash and batter and pulverize and vent his rage.  When Steve knocked his hand aside, however, the urge to hit back became unrestrai­nable.  He moved fast, driving his other fist toward Steve, but the soldier caught his arm and pushed with so much power that the Hulk staggered from surprise alone.  Tucked in corner of the Hulk’s mind, the small part of Bruce that was still aware understood that it wasn’t just serum-enhanced strength Steve was leveraging against him.  Steve was controlling kinetic energy, slowing the strike and dissipating the force until the blow was stoppable.  That wisp of understanding was nearly dashed by the Hulk’s irritation as his quarry slipped away and leapt a good fifteen feet back up the mangled stairs to the floor above them.

The Hulk wasn’t going to let him escape.  He chased him upward, driving him back to the higher floors.  Steve sent wreckage down, ripping the stairs out of the wall and raining twisted metal and chunks of cement.  The Hulk dodged and batted it aside and weathered the hits like they were nothing, following quickly and not allowing Rogers to gain ground on him.  At the top of the stairs, Steve turned and with a wild sweep of his arm pulled the rest of the stairs loose.  The Hulk wasn’t deterred even as the steps disappeared under his feet.  He slammed down his legs and clenched his thighs and jumped and landed.

In front of him, Steve staggered, nearly falling to his knees as he pushed open the stairwell doors and stumbled out.  Iron Man was waiting for him, but the soldier surged past.  Tony tried to grab him.  Steve threw him without ever touching him and held him against the far wall of the hallway.  He paused to do that, to keep Iron Man pinned, the armor bending and buckling beneath the incredible force keeping him to the wall.  The Hulk roared and charged, the floor shaking under the stampeding beast, reaching for Rogers.  Steve dropped Tony and whirled, gasping in pain and propelling that awesome power he’d used against Iron Man at the Hulk.  The Hulk wasn’t prepared and the impact threw him back into the opposite wall, breaking through to the room behind.  Frustration burned through the monster, growing wilder and wilder and hotter by the second, as he ran back to the hallway.

Iron Man tackled Steve.  They struggled in a blur of kicks and punches and twisting bodies, smashing into walls and skidding across the polished floor, before Tony somehow managed to knock him down.  He threw himself on top of the sprawled soldier.  “Stop!” yelled Stark.  He pinned one of Steve’s wrists, straddling him with all his strength, fumbling for the syringes tucked in his suit. 

Steve’s other hand was locked around Iron Man’s throat and squeezing.  Metal bent.  His eyes widened in horror at the sight of the needle for which Tony was fumbling.  “No!  Don’t touch me!  _Don’t touch me!  Bucky!”_   He threw his head back in abject horror.  _“Help me!”_

“Sir, I believe Captain Rogers is having a flashback or some sort of waking nightmare.”

“You think?  Hold still, damn it!”

“Restraining him like this will only–”

“Steve, listen to me!  You need to stop!  We’re trying to help you!”

“Get off of me!” Steve screamed.  _“Get off!”_ A wave of energy seemed to radiate out from him, violent and powerful, slamming into everything around him.  Electricity exploded, surging from the power conduits in the walls.  Glass shattered.  Drywall and plaster cracked and snapped.  Windows burst and walls broke.  The whole of the hallway vibrated and shook as its structure was compromised.  Debris fell everywhere as the top of the Tower trembled.  Wreckage tumbled past the windows outside.  Iron Man was tossed up into the ceiling by a kick fueled with telekinetic power, and he went straight through into the floor above.  The Hulk reached his huge paw toward the soldier who lay gasping, but Steve’s wild eyes shot toward him, glowing with pain and mounting madness.  “Don’t come any closer!” he shouted.  The Hulk didn’t listen.  He snapped and roared.  There was some effort to control his strength, but it was weathering as the seconds wore on and his patience wore with them.  He tried to stomp on the other man, but Steve was too fast.  He scrambled to his knees, clambering through the debris, and one short breath had the Hulk locked in place by a force that pushed back against him as hard as he was driving against it.  It was as if there were chains on his arms and legs and looped around his chest, pulling him toward the other end of the hall.  Pulling and yanking and squeezing.  He fought but he couldn’t break free until it was too late.  Steve was running.  Steve was gone.

The Hulk screamed in annoyance.  Bruce struggled to hold fast to whatever thoughts he could even as the wind and thunder of the storm of the Hulk’s growing rage tore them away.  _Don’t hurt Steve.  Stop him._   Iron Man fell through the crumbling remains of the ceiling.  “Shit,” he gasped, struggling to his feet.  “JARVIS?”

“I do not think he realizes where he is.  He is heading upward.”

Upward.  And the only thing above them was the penthouse.  Even under the smothering hold of the monster, Bruce realized what that meant.

“Oh, God,” Tony said.  He fired the repulsors in Iron Man’s boots and propelled himself back through the hole in the ceiling to the top floor.  Then he flung his hands forward and the armor flew off his body and through the building.  “Go!” he cried to the Hulk, still clenching the two needles.  “Go to Pepper!”

It was Bruce’s connection to Tony that convinced the Hulk to move.  The beast was jumping, tearing that hole even wider, and launching himself to the floor above.  He flew, running through walls and across rooms in a direct path to the penthouse.  The top of the Tower shook with the strain of the Hulk rampaging across it.  That rage was mounting, growing and growing and spreading through the thickness of muscles.  It was coming in an avalanche now, a series of landslides, one after another after another.  They tumbled down through his mind and crushed anything in their path.  Bruce held fast.  He knew he could.  _Save Pepper.  Don’t hurt Steve.  Don’t hurt either of them._

The Hulk broke through the outer wall of the penthouse with a spray of drywall, furniture flung aside by the impact.  There was a shrill scream.  “Steve!  Steve, what’s the matter with you?”  Expensive tile cracked and broke under his feet as he drove his shoulder through another wall and exploded into the bedroom.

Iron Man stood against the wall.  Not Iron Man.  The face plate was lifted, and Pepper’s pale countenance appeared beneath.  Her eyes were wide with terror and confusion.  She glanced from Steve, who stood in the middle of the room, to the Hulk, who was growling and lumbering closer.  Steve was panting, shaking, darting his eyes around fearfully but not seeing anything.  And the Hulk was prepared to pounce.  A tense eternity passed.

 _“Pepper!”_ Stark cried from down the hall.

That was enough to shatter the stillness.  Steve reached his hand out toward the Hulk, pushing him back again, but the soldier was tiring and the force behind the blow wasn’t nearly the same magnitude as before.  The Hulk yelled his frustration at being knocked back into the wall, expensive artwork clattering to the floor and smashing.  Steve gritted his teeth, fighting to hold him there.  Pepper dropped Iron Man’s mask and raised the suit’s right palm repulsor.  Blue light glowed threateningly.  “Steve!”  Her voice shook from behind Iron Man’s helmet.  “Stop it!  Let him go!”

Tony ran through the bedroom doors.  “Pepper, don’t!”

Steve flashed furious eyes at Stark, throwing him back down the hall with a sweep of his other arm.  “Oh my God!” Pepper cried, and the palm repulsor fired.

The shot hit Steve’s right shoulder.  He went down with a cry and turned to Pepper.  The pain and fear were suddenly gone from his gaze.  Now there was only the anger.  It was bright and brilliant, teeming with unhinged violence, burning with rage that was gleefully unrestrained.  It was terrifying. 

His lips twisted in a small smile.  And then he dismantled the suit.

Pepper screamed as the armor was ripped away.  The gloves and vambraces fell, and the boots hissed as they unwillingly released her legs.  The chest plate came loose, the arc reactor winking out.  Piece by piece Iron Man was taken, leaving Pepper cowering defenselessly against the wall.  The suit reassembled in a blink in front of her, levitating, looming over her shaking form.  It was staring that vicious, malevolent stare.  Its palm repulsor was raised and pointed at her.  It was powering up, glowing and heated with deadly energy.

“No!” Tony cried as he ran back inside the room.  _“_ No!Don’t, Steve!  It’s Pepper!  You’re going to hurt Pepper!”

Steve stopped.  In a blink, it was all gone.  The rage.  The insanity.  His eyes widened, filling with fear and pain again, filling with tears.  Iron Man fell apart before their eyes, the armor clanking to the bedroom floor all at once.  “Oh, God…” he whispered.  He staggered and collapsed to his knees.  The room seemed to groan, things shaking and rattling and breaking, as he buried his face in his hands and came apart.

The force holding the Hulk to the wall disappeared.  The beast devoured the distance to Steve in two huge strides and drove him to the floor.  The soldier didn’t struggle, falling beneath the Hulk’s weight.  His head smacked into the carpet.  He lay limply as the Hulk reached down a huge hand and pressed it into Steve’s throat.  All the power had fled the form beneath him.  One push and he could break this man’s neck.  The urge to crush him was nearly overwhelming.  _No!  Don’t hurt him!_

The Hulk was angry, but he held back.

Tony grabbed Pepper.  “Are you alright?  Are you?” he demanded hoarsely.  He was panicked, his eyes wide and shaken with how close Steve had come to killing her.  She couldn’t manage any words, her face streaked with tears, but she nodded.  He didn’t spend another second at her side, instead running to the middle of the room where the Hulk had Steve trapped.  He yanked one of the syringes from the pocket of his pants, skidding to his knees.

Tears bled from Steve’s eyes.  He was tormented.  Agonized.  Grimacing in excruciating pain.  Completely devastated.  But he looked at Tony and _saw_ him.  “Make it stop,” he begged.  “Tony, please help me.  _Please_ … I–”

Tony faltered for a second before uncapping the needle.  “We’re gonna fix this,” he breathlessly swore.  He grabbed Steve’s other wrist tightly, mindful of the bleeding burn on Rogers’ shoulder as he held his arm still.  Steve could have broken free easily, but he didn’t, and Stark jabbed the needle into his bicep.

The soldier didn’t fight, breathing in hitched, ragged pants.  “I’m so sorry.”  His eyes were dark blue and wet and _broken_.  “I couldn’t…  I didn’t…”

“I know,” Tony soothed quietly.  He pulled the needle out and tossed it aside.  But he didn’t release his wrist.  He laid his free hand on Steve’s forehead in an uncharacteristic show of comfort and smoothed back the mess of his hair.  “Just sleep.” Steve’s eyes slipped shut and his breathing evened out.  The sedative took him down.

The silence that followed was rife with pain and fear and slowly receding panic.  _It’s over.  Let go._ The Hulk leaned back, staring suspiciously at the now unconscious man beneath him, not trusting Bruce’s voice.  His anger began to dissipate and logic tried to reassert itself.  As the long seconds slipped away, the rage cooled further and further.  _Let go._

The disorienting sensation of coming back into his flesh, of control over his body returning, rushed over Bruce.  He shrunk back, and it hurt.  Dizziness left him reeling, his senses scattered as the Hulk disappeared back into his mind.  And now he was sitting over Steve in the tattered remains of his clothes, and it was his hand clenched around the unconscious captain’s throat.

Bruce breathed heavily, his heart calming in its adrenaline-fueled rush.  He swallowed through a dry throat, his body tingling and aching with exhaustion as it always did after he came back.  He loosened his grip, his fingers stiff and uncooperative.  He felt Steve’s pulse point and found his heart rate was still too fast, though it was improved.  He had no idea how long they had before the soldier burned through the dendrotoxin.  For the moment, however, the relief was too strong to worry.

Tony collapsed back on his rear.  He couldn’t catch his breath, glancing dazedly around the remains of his bedroom.  He finally met Pepper’s gaze.  She stepped away from the wall slowly, tentatively, her face white and wet and terrified.  She ran on light feet to Tony’s side, grabbing onto him.  “Are you okay?” she whispered, collapsing to her knees and cupping his bruised face.

“Yeah,” he said softly.  He set Steve’s hand over his belly after Bruce tenderly climbed off Rogers’ unmoving body.  Steve’s chest was evenly rising and falling with nice, calm breaths.  Bruce checked his pulse again and found it even slower.  The drug was working.  _Thank God._ “I’m okay.  You’re okay.  Steve is okay.  Bruce?”

Bruce sank to the dirty floor beside the inventor.  “Yeah.”  That was the best he could manage.

Tony patted him on the leg.  “Then we’re all okay.”

It didn’t feel that way.  The echo of the horrific struggle was loud and hateful and filled the ravaged room.  The three of them stared at Steve’s sleeping form in front of them, horrified and alarmed beyond coherent thought.  They stared like Steve’s eyes might snap open at any minute, like he could spring up and threaten them again, just as violent and unhinged and dangerous as he had been minutes before.  But he didn’t.  He was out.  _Thank God._

Eventually Tony shook his head.  He looked at Bruce.  “Now what do we do?”

Bruce didn’t know, but whatever it was, they needed to figure it out.

Fast.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Thank you all so much for the wonderful comments. I really appreciate them! With the medical stuff in this chapter, I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable and I do my research, but I'm no expert. If you find any mistakes, please let me know :-). Also, there are a couple of references to parts of _Agents of SHIELD_ , but nothing I would call a spoiler.
> 
> Well, Steve needs a hug. Good thing Clint is there. Enjoy!

Clint got the call about an hour after he and Romanoff returned to SHIELD Headquarters in Manhattan.  He was barely out of the shower when he heard his phone vibrating in the pocket of his jacket.  He fished it out, a towel wrapped around his waist and swearing angrily as water dripped all over the floor of the quarters he’d been assigned.  He glanced at the caller ID.  “Steve, what’s up?”

“Barton?”  The voice on the other end of the phone was easily recognizable and most definitely not Steve.

Concern immediately dug through Clint.  Something was wrong.  Something was very wrong.  “Stark, why the hell do you have Steve’s phone?”

“Have you seen the news?”

“I just got back from overseas.  I haven’t seen anything.”

Stark paused.  Clint could practically hear the other man fight to stay calm.  “Rogers is in some serious trouble.  Serious, like _serious,_ trouble.”  Clint’s heart immediately started to pound.  The water coating his skin turned icy.  Tony had moments (many moments in fact) where he used theatrics and exaggeration to get a rise out of someone, but something told Clint this wasn’t one of those times.  This was too cruel to be a practical joke.  “You need to come down to Stark Tower right away.  And you need to promise me you won’t freak out.  No calling in SHIELD back-up.  No calling in _anybody_.  I mean it.  We need to keep this quiet.”

“Stark, what the hell–”

“Just get over here.  Hurry.”  And the line went dead.

Needless to say, Clint hurried.  He didn’t like Stark, but he’d heard a level of fear and panic in the other man’s voice that he’d never heard from him before.  Not even when a nuke had been careening toward New York City and the only choice had been to fly it through the Chitauri portal to save them all.  That more than anything made Clint keep this quiet, even if his first inclination was to report in.  Well, that should have been his first inclination.  Above even his duty to SHIELD was his duty to Steve.  If Steve needed him, he had to get there.

And if Steve was in trouble…  His mind raced with the horrible possibilities.  Maybe it wasn’t because of what Lahey had done to him, but Clint sincerely doubted it.  And he was shaken enough just considering it that he’d immediately defied Tony’s request and sought Natasha’s support.  She sensed his dismay almost instantly, her blue eyes narrowing.  “It’s Rogers,” was all Clint needed to say, and she was dressed and ready to go in a matter of minutes.  Stark might have had his problems with SHIELD, but Clint didn’t really give a damn.  He was a SHIELD agent, and so was she.  Steve was, too.  But more than that, they were all Avengers.  There had been a fateful moment eighteen months ago when they’d all fought side by side against a common enemy as team, bonded together by a dangerous and incredible experience.  That counted for a lot.  And, whether or not Stark liked it, SHIELD had been a part of that.  So if Tony couldn’t trust Natasha, he would need to get over it.

Still, he didn’t call Fury.  Not yet.

They took a SHIELD SUV from the garage and drove to Midtown as fast as possible, though traffic was heavy.  He was trying his damnedest to pull up that stoicism he always needed to get him through difficult situations.  Natasha was cool and collected beside him in the passenger seat, her keen eyes scanning through the day’s news that the onboard computer was displaying for them.  It was a rushed, frantic stream of sound bites and video clips, a chaotic show of people screaming and cars exploding and apparently Captain America saving dozens of hostages and innocent civilians from a failed bank robbery.  While that was unusual and maybe a bit spectacular, in and of itself it was nothing alarming.  The stories shifted to amateur video caught an hour before of the top of Stark Tower apparently being damaged by some unknown, internal attack.  The news media had focused its attention on Stark after it was discovered that Stark’s girlfriend had been present with Steve during the earlier incident, and they were buzzing like flies with this newest development.  Clint glanced at the images, taken with a phone camera on the street below, of the top of the tower shaking and glass shattering and the huge, italicized letters proclaiming “STARK” on the side breaking loose and falling to the ground.  It was a miracle that no one had been hurt down on the street.  Whatever was going on was every bit as serious as Tony had claimed, and Clint found his heart pounding again.

He should have never left Steve to recover from what happened on his own.  He should have denied Fury’s orders to go with Romanoff and hunt down the associates of the mercenaries involved with Lahey’s plot.  He should have stayed at Steve’s side, even if his friend had seemed hearty and hale and healthy.  That niggling voice of doubt had plagued him the morning he’d driven to Stark Tower to tell Steve he was leaving for the Balkans.  He’d tried to ignore it because this was his job, and Steve knew that just as well as he did.  This was what they did as SHIELD agents, and they had to take the missions to which they were assigned.  And to say he hadn’t wanted to hunt those bastards down, to try and get to the bottom of what had happened, would have been a lie.  He had to know, both for his sake and for Steve’s.  Those monsters and anyone and everyone linked to them needed to be eradicated, pulled out by the goddamn roots and flushed from existence.  There wasn’t much room in their line of work for rest and recovery, but there was a hell of a lot of opportunity for vengeance.  Steve hadn’t wanted him to do anything rash, and he hadn’t really (at least nothing over which he’d lose sleep).  And Steve had _told_ him to go, knowing that Clint was concerned and looking for a reason to stay without him ever admitting to it.

But Clint should have listened to that voice, that voice full of guilt and worry and doubt.  And now as he and Natasha picked through the mob of media and onlookers being held back by Stark’s security personnel and entered the Tower, he needed to stay calm.  He needed to ignore his fear, his anger and the dark feeling of foreboding gnawing miserably at the pit of his stomach.  He needed to focus.

No amount of focus could prepare him for what he found.

“Christ,” he whispered as the elevator doors opened and revealed disaster.  He shared a quick look with Natasha before stepping out into the mess that was the top floor of Stark Tower.  There was debris everywhere, spread across the once spotless floors, strewn through the hallways and rooms.  Broken furniture and broken walls and broken glass.  It looked like a bomb had exploded.

“Agent Barton.”  The calm voice startled Clint for a second before he recognized it.  “It is nice to see you again, though I wish the circumstances were better.”

“JARVIS, right?” Natasha said.  She looked around in awe.  “What happened?”

“Mr. Stark is in the penthouse.  I am certain he will explain.”  It wasn’t an answer, and if a computer could sound unsettled, JARVIS was managing it.  The two SHIELD agents shared another worried look before walking quickly through the wreckage toward the huge penthouse.  They moved fast, glass crunching under their boots as they wove their way through the hallways.  Some rooms were completely demolished, gigantic holes punched through walls.  Chunks of drywall spilled into the corridor, and Clint pushed them aside.  Eventually they reached what he assumed was Stark’s bedroom, stepping through the doors that were ajar rather than the ridiculously huge gaping place where a wall had once been.  And now no amount of strength could prepare him for what he saw.

“Steve,” he hoarsely whispered.  He was across the room in a breath, running toward the bed.  Steve lay atop the silk blankets on his side, Stark’s girlfriend sitting beside him and tenderly hushing him.  He was curled in on himself and trembling uncontrollably.  Sweat bathed his face in a glistening sheen.  His right shoulder was a mess of burned skin and blood.  And his hands were bound behind his back.

“What the hell, Barton?”  Stark’s angry voice drew his attention, and he whirled to find the inventor coming into the room from a spacious bathroom to their left that thankfully seemed more intact.  He was wearing his Iron Man suit though without the helmet, and he carried a large and amply stocked medical grade first aid kit.  His furious eyes darted to Romanoff.  “Was there a part of ‘keep this quiet’ you didn’t understand?”

Clint couldn’t have cared less that Stark was angry.  He watched Steve shiver, afraid to even touch him.  Steve’s face contorted in a vicious grimace, and he was breathing in strained, uneven pants.  He looked like he was in intense pain.  Everything Clint had been trying to keep under control since leaving SHIELD Headquarters burst to the surface.  “Why is he like this?  What happened?” he snapped.  He turned blazing eyes at Tony.  “Let him loose!  Can’t you see he’s in pain?”

Potts looked up.  Her cheeks were tear-stained, but she seemed remarkably calm considering her home was in ruin and Captain America was bound and suffering on her bed with his head in her lap.  “Tony, hurry,” she called.  Stark abandoned his angry glare at the two SHIELD agents before turning back to the bed.  He staggered over, setting the first aid kit on the floor and flipping it open. 

Clint came closer, trying to keep his emotions under control so he could think logically and trying even harder not to see red about the metal bar Iron Man had obviously wrapped around Steve’s wrists with his enhanced strength.  The captain’s ankles were similarly trussed.  Thankfully, Natasha was calmer than he was.  “What happened?” she asked.

Tony glanced at Pepper.  His face was bruised, and his temple was bloodied.  Clint could see glass twinkling in his hair.  His gauntlets came loose from his hands with a hiss, and he set them to the floor and took a sterile pad and a pair of scissors from the kit.  Pepper shushed Steve gently, her hands soothingly carding through his sweat-soaked hair, as Tony reached over and cut and pulled the remains of Steve’s green shirt out of the burn.  Clint got a better look on it as he came closer.  He’d seen that sort of wound before, littering the corpses of the Chitauri on the streets of New York and painting the mercenaries he’d shot down in Lahey’s lab.  It was a repulsor burn.

Steve’s body was taut, every muscle clenched hard under Clint’s fingers as he reached over and helped Tony clean the burn.  “Stark,” Natasha prompted again, “start talking.”

“Yeah, um, I don’t really know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it.  Steve’s gone crazy.”

Clint supposed that should have been obvious.  A hell of a fight had clearly gone down up here, one that had put holes in walls and shattered everything made of glass on the top floors and ripped the “STARK” logo right off the top of the building.  And those holes in the walls and ceilings looked disturbingly Hulk-sized.  Both Stark and Potts appeared devastated, traumatized, and shaken.  But he still couldn’t understand that, couldn’t connect the damage he saw and the burn on Steve’s shoulder with the alarming fact that this fight had probably been between Steve and Tony and Bruce.  And Steve being crazy?  That was damn impossible.  Clint knew Steve the best out of anyone, and there wasn’t anything that could drive Steve to hurt anyone who wasn’t well-validated and proven as evil.  Steve was steadfast, moral, kind, and compassionate.  Steve was quiet and honest.  Steve was _Captain America_.  And _nothing_ could make Captain America violent, let alone _this_ violent.

“Stop.  Hold on.  What do you mean crazy?” Natasha asked.  She looked around again, surveying the massive destruction.  Clint knew her far too well to not notice the fear in her eyes, how deeply worried she was becoming.

“I mean goddamn nuts,” Tony tightly responded.  He grabbed a saline wash bottle from the kit and squeezed it over the angry burn.  Steve groaned and tried to curl in on himself more but didn’t wake.  “Lahey’s experiment did something to him.  Something really bad.  Apparently he’s a telekinetic now.”

“A…  A what?”

“A telekinetic,” Stark snapped irately.  He turned to look sharply over his shoulder at Natasha. “You know, moving things with his mind?”

That was impossible.  That sort of nonsense didn’t exist outside of comic books and movies.  That was…  Natasha’s eyes glanced to the bleeding welt on Stark’s hairline.  “How hard did you hit your head?”

“I’m serious!  _Look_ around!  You think this just happened by itself?”  Desperation cracked Stark’s voice.  None of his normal calm and cool arrogance was there.  None of his sarcastic mirth.  He was raw and frightened.  “He almost killed us before we got through to him!”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Pepper said, holding Steve tighter as a shudder wracked his huge frame.  Her blue eyes were watery with tears.  “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

Tony shook his head.  He went back to tending the wound.  “Doesn’t matter.  We need to do something fast.  We knocked him out, but the sedative won’t last long with the way his body burns through stuff.  We’ve already had to dose him again.  We can’t let him wake up.  He can’t control what he’s doing, and it’s feeding off his emotions.  This whole thing is so screwed up.  So screwed up.  He’s out of his mind.  We have to keep him unconscious until–”

“Hold on!  Hold on!” Natasha stammered.  She was flustered, at a total loss.  It took a lot to leave Black Widow bereft of her composure.  “Just…  I mean, how…”

Tony flashed furious eyes at her.  “Let me put this in simple terms,” he said condescendingly.  His distress was fueling the venom in his voice.  “Lahey’s wonder drug that we all thought did nothing?  It did something.  It did something really bad.  Steve pulled a gun ten feet through the air to his hand and shot someone.  He stopped a commuter bus from crushing a family without even _touching_ it.  He shorted out the Tower’s power system just by getting angry.  My new decorating job?  Courtesy of Hurricane Steve.”

“Stark, just take it easy,” Natasha said as calmly as she could.  Pepper reached over and grasped Tony’s shoulder, helpless tears slipping from her eyes.

Tony bowed his head.  He looked crushed under concern.  Guilt.  Clint couldn’t fathom ever seeing such a thing as shame beat down the egocentric billionaire.  “I know it sounds crazy, and it is.  It’s unbelievable.  But you need to believe me.  Bruce said Steve came to him right before this happened.  Said he was having these intense nightmares and migraines.  Had been for days, I guess, and it was driving him insane.  Literally insane.  Maybe if we’d noticed…”

Clint couldn’t help the hot burn of his anger.  Seeing Steve like this, hearing what Stark was saying about him…  Apparently Rogers had been suffering, suffering to the point of madness right in front of their eyes, and they hadn’t done a single thing to help him.  “Why didn’t you?” he harshly demanded.

“Because I screwed up!” Tony returned just as hotly.  “And until today he _seemed_ fine!  He kept saying he was okay!  How were we supposed to know he was lying?”

“Tony,” Pepper murmured softly.

Stark looked at her, at her crestfallen expression and imploring eyes.  He sighed and shook his head again.  “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated, this time his voice more forceful and resolute.  “Who knows if we would have been able to do anything to stop it.  Point is: we need to do something now.”

“What?”

“I don’t know!”  Stark’s frustration was striking.  Clint didn’t know him that well, but for him to admit that he couldn’t fix something, that he didn’t know _how_ to fix something, seemed difficult for him.  And that rang of how serious this situation was.  Stark and Banner were two of the smartest men alive, geniuses by all rights, and if they weren’t sure what to do…  “I don’t want SHIELD involved.  I don’t want _anyone_ involved if we can avoid it because what’s happening to him isn’t just dangerous.  As sick as it was, Lahey’s experiment _worked._ ”  Clint swallowed thickly, his eyes drifting to Steve’s shivering body beneath his hands.  What Stark wasn’t saying was frightfully clear.  If he was right and Steve now had some powers of telekinesis (powers _strong enough_ to do this much damage and render two of the Avengers scrambling to stop him), the consequences could be devastating and not just for him.

There wasn’t a government or organization on the planet that wouldn’t kill to get its hands on a super soldier who could alter the world with his mind.

_Holy shit._

“We need to get him some place hidden and safe.  We need time to figure this out.  I don’t trust anyone else to do it.  I don’t trust anyone to help without trying to use him.”  Stark gave a small shake of his head and turned his eyes to Clint.  They were calm now.  Open.  Tentatively imploring.  “But I trust you.  You wouldn’t hurt him or hand him over to someone else who would.  You’re his friend.”

The way Tony said that, so certain and relieved, struck Clint deeply.  The archer released a slow breath, trying to wrap his mind around this.  It didn’t seem true.  It couldn’t be.  He supposed it had been too much to hope that Lahey’s experiment hadn’t had any effects.  It had been too much to put his faith in the fact that Steve had seemed healthy and unaffected.  The last time he’d seen Steve his eyes had been bright and his smile had been easy.  The grief and rage robbed him of coherent thought for a moment, and he squeezed his free hand into a fist hard enough to drive his nails painfully into his palm.  He should never have left.  _He should never have left!_

Steve gasped, kicking weakly, and Clint struggled to hold his lower body still.  The sight of his friend’s hands bound behind him angered him again, but then he watched Steve’s fingers flexing and his muscles in his arms twisting and shifting as he unconsciously worked against the make-shift restraints.  Maybe Stark had been right to tie him up like this.  He was shaking harder and harder, battling against nightmares and demons in his mind it seemed.  He didn’t look sedated in the least.  His face screwed into a tight grimace.  He moaned through clenched teeth.  “Where’s Banner?” Clint asked worriedly.

Stark finished washing the burn out, the bloody water spilling all over his expensive bedspread.  “Down in the lab trying to cook up some more sedative,” he answered.  “Hold this.  We need to hurry.”  Clint reached up and held the bandages in place while Tony unwound gauze and wrapped it around the injury.  Normally a burn this bad would require more extensive treatment, but with Steve’s enhanced healing, he would be fine.  And taking him to a hospital was out of the question, so they had to make do with what they had.  “Tape.”

Pepper fumbled for that, holding Steve’s head to her stomach as she reached into the kit for the medical tape.  She ripped off a few strips and handed them to Stark.  Steve groaned again as Tony carefully secured the dressings to his shoulder.  The inventor rushed to finish, looking increasingly dismayed.  “Don’t tell me he’s waking up again.”

Clint dumbly shook his head, unsure of what to make of any of this.  He looked down at Steve, watching his eyes rove mindlessly, desperately, beneath tightly closed lids.  “He’s not waking up,” Clint said.  “He’s dreaming.”

That became frightfully obvious a second later when Steve threw his head back and tried to roll away.  The sound of his ragged cry took Clint right back to the hellish nightmare in the lab, and it was only with practiced composure fostered from years of dealing with dangerous and difficult situations that he was able to ignore his own bad memories.  “Easy!” he said, wrapping his arm around Steve’s middle and steadying him.  “Easy!”

The room _rumbled_.  It was like an earthquake.  Things fell.  Sections of the ceiling, battered and pulverized by the earlier struggle, busted loose and smashed to the floor.  Tony was up, leaning over Pepper as she held Steve’s head tighter against her, debris smashing uselessly against the back of Iron Man.  Natasha looked around wildly, wide-eyed and pale.  She whispered something in Russian.  The huge windows displaying the summer twilight behind them rattled, and Steve screamed again.  “I’m sorry!  I’m so sorry!  Don’t hurt me!”

“Steve, no one’s going to hurt you,” Clint assured him.  He tried to calm the writhing body.  “Steve!”

“Yeah, that doesn’t work,” Tony said.  “JARVIS, tell me Bruce is coming!”

“He is on his way, sir.  The structural stability of the penthouse is becoming compromised.  There are fires on the 31st, 32nd, and 34th floors.  Fire suppression systems are online, but I suggest you move to a safer location,” the AI calmly announced.

That didn’t seem to be an option, not with everything falling apart around them and the soldier mindlessly suffering on the bed in front of them.  Steve gasped a sob, whispering things Clint couldn’t quite hear.  Clint wasn’t so ready to give up on getting through to him.  It was a nightmare.  If they could wake him from that, get him to listen and calm down…  Pepper let go as Tony pulled her from the bed, and Clint took her spot.  He grasped his friend’s agonized face in his hands.  “Steve, it’s Clint.  Come on.  You’re alright.  You need to wake up.”

“Bucky?” came a hoarse whimper.

Clint knew well who that was.  Something inside him ached.  “It’s Clint,” he reminded.  “Calm down.”

Blue eyes half-lidded and swimming with tears peered up at him.  “He didn’t mean to,” Steve whispered.  “He really didn’t.  I swear.  He never means to, Buck.”

Maybe playing along would be better.  Maybe that would provide some comfort, at least.  “I know.”  This was something dark, something deeply buried in Steve’s mind that was coming to the surface.  Clint was damn proficient at reading people, and he knew his friend well enough to see it in his face.  His eyes were the eyes of a scared little kid.  He’d seen eyes like those before.  His brother’s eyes.  His eyes, staring back at him in a mirror amidst the bruises covering his face.  Bruises put there by his father.  Clint ached.  “It’s okay.”

Steve’s face crumpled into a wince, and suddenly he arched his back like he was trapped in some sort of hellish seizure.  His body bent with enough force to break bones and rip skin, and Clint let him go.  He watched, wide-eyed and terrified beyond any rational thought, as the windows behind them completely shattered.  The razor-sharp glass exploded into the penthouse.  It seemed to happen in slow motion, a million shards twinkling as they rotated and spun in the sunset.  When the Avengers were never struck, never sliced or cut or gouged, Clint realized the glass didn’t just look slow.  It _was_ slow.

“Oh, my God,” Natasha whispered.  The shards dangled in front of them and around them and over them like some sort of twisted, deconstructed chandelier.  Seconds passed in utter shock as everything glittered and glowed in an achingly lethargic show, dispersing in a beautifully random pattern.  A particularly large piece floated past Stark’s face.  He reached a tentative hand forward from where he held Pepper tightly to his chest, his eyes wide.  He tapped the shard and sent it spinning.  He watched it turn and turn, transfixed, shocked into a stupor.  Nobody spoke.  Nobody moved.  Nobody breathed.

Just as suddenly as all of this had happened, it was over.  Steve sagged back onto the bed.  The glass fell straight to the floor like crystal rain.

Silence.  Shaking breaths fleeing through trembling lips.  Shuddering hearts.  “Believe me now?” Tony asked softly.

“Holy hell,” Clint breathed.  Steve gasped in front of him, struggling weakly against his bindings.  If he’d been aware enough to put all of his strength into it, he could have ripped them apart.  Clint was afraid to touch the other man, but his trepidation disappeared when Steve sobbed and rolled back onto his side and bent himself as tightly as he could into a fetal position, drawing his knees up to his forehead.  Clint laid his hand on Steve’s arm, trying to offer whatever comfort he could.  He didn’t think Steve even knew he was there.  “How is this possible?”

There was a shuffling clamor behind them.  “Oh, thank God,” Tony said as Banner pushed through the wreckage by the door.  He had two vials in his hand and a syringe.  “We need to get him back under.”

“Stark, this is…  We need to call in somebody,” Natasha said.

Bruce rushed to the bed, eyeing the new damage and his friends’ white faces in dread.  “The dendrotoxin isn’t working as well as I’d hoped.  And this is the last of it.  I can’t make more here.  I’m out of the precursors.”

“How do we get more?”

Bruce jabbed the needle into the vial and drew the clear liquid inside.  “We can’t.  I stopped stocking up on it when I realized it wasn’t going to work on the Hulk.  And the corner drug store doesn’t exactly sell snake venom.”

Tony sighed.  “Then we need to find something else like yesterday.”

Bruce grabbed an alcohol swab from the medical kit and wiped down Steve’s arm (not that it mattered – he couldn’t get sick, and the minute chance of an infection was definitely the least of his worries).  He injected him with the sedative, watching nervously for a few long seconds afterward.  But Steve relaxed in short order and his eyes closed more fully.  He lost consciousness without a fight.  Bruce shook his head, reaching his hand under Steve’s jaw to count his pulse.  He didn’t look pleased with what he found.  “We can’t keep doing this to him anyway.  It’s putting tremendous strain on his heart.  We need to find a more permanent solution.”

“What’s happening to him?” Clint asked softly.  He couldn’t tear his eyes from Steve’s lax face.

Bruce sighed wearily.  He looked exhausted.  He pulled his glasses from his face and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “Obviously Dan’s serum interacted with his body in some way we couldn’t detect before.  I won’t know more until I run some tests, which I can’t do here.”

“Stark,” Natasha said more firmly, “we _need_ to call someone in on this.”

“Sure,” Tony said acidly.  “Who do you trust?”

Natasha looked lost and aggravated, again two things that were entirely uncharacteristic of her.  She didn’t answer that, not even with the obvious response.  Clint caught her eyes, uncertain himself.  SHIELD was vast and powerful with some of the best minds in science in its ranks.  They had state of the art research and medical facilities on hand, filled with all of the cutting edge equipment and technologies money could buy.  And Steve was an agent of SHIELD.  They already had doctors familiar with his unique physiology, in addition to the mountains of data on Lahey and his experiments.  Bringing them in on this was only logical.

But SHIELD had its dark side.  It had been growing for some time.  They’d both noticed it.  There were ambitions in the shadows, deep and hungry, dreams wielded by powerful men in the higher echelons who controlled funding and resources.  And it was no secret that SHIELD had been interested in the super soldier serum.  Not many people knew it but it had only been due to Fury’s protection that Steve hadn’t been stuck in a lab when they’d pulled him from the ice.  It had also been Fury’s command that had kept SHIELD (and other interested people) off Bruce’s trail and that had kept Iron Man in the hands of Tony and had let Thor leave the planet with the Tesseract.  Perhaps SHIELD wasn’t what it used to be, but Clint still trusted Nick Fury.

It was Bruce, however, who made the argument.  He stood from the bedside, recapping the needle carefully.  “We have to go back to SHIELD.  We need all of their data on the experiment.  And I need to talk to Dan.”

Tony visibly buckled, drawing everyone’s attention.  His face went white beneath the bruises.  “Yeah, well, unfortunately that’s not going to happen.”  He grimaced and looked at Banner apologetically.  “Lahey’s dead.”

Despite the enormity of what was happening, the gravity and sheer impossibility of it, Stark’s soft announcement seemed downright earth-shattering.  Bruce’s face broke in horror.  “Oh, God,” he moaned.

“When?” Clint demanded.

“He committed suicide this morning.  Fury called earlier today to let me know,” Stark explained.  He shook his head.  “If he’d waited another day, he could have seen the wonderful results of his life’s work.”

The words weren’t serious.  They were loaded with sarcasm, with that twinge of insanity brought on by too much irony over a really bad situation, but they rubbed Clint raw and before he could contain himself, he was in Stark’s face.  He really didn’t give a damn that the inventor’s armor was unbreakable to his mere mortal strength.  He didn’t give a damn about anything right then except venting the emotions poisoning him.  “He was a sick son of a bitch,” he snarled, his eyes flashing in warning, “and a goddamn coward.  And now we have _nothing_ to go on.  I’m not watching Steve die again because of that bastard.”

“You think I don’t know how fundamentally screwed we are?  I watched Rogers turn from the world’s least rile-able man to a twitchy lunatic in less than an hour!  He almost choked me.  He almost killed Pepper!”  Pepper herself looked frail and frightened at that, but she stepped closer and reached for Stark’s hand.  She wasn’t just trying to assure him that she was okay.  She was trying to calm him.  The last thing they needed was more anger, more stress, or more erratic behavior.  “This is getting exponentially worse.  And if he’s blowing up the top of my tower now, what the hell is going to be capable of doing in a few hours?  Tomorrow?”  Clint could hardly breathe.  He knew what was coming.  “If we can’t fix him, we…”  Tony couldn’t finish.

“We what?” Clint snapped.  “We lock him up and throw away the key?  We kill him?”

The mere thought of that was harsh and overwhelming.  It shocked them both, as though neither of them had truly considered the possibility until that moment.  “Whoa, whoa,” Natasha said.  She touched Clint’s shoulder to pull him away.  The tension was thick and unbearable as the two men stared each other down.  “Let’s not go there.  There’s no reason to.  Bruce is right; we need to get in contact with SHIELD and transport Rogers to a facility where he’s contained.  Then we can figure out what we’re dealing with.”

“Not SHIELD.  I don’t trust SHIELD,” Stark argued.

Natasha was a master at keeping herself under control.  Her expression was placid and her voice was level, even as Tony basically accused the organization for which they worked of having less than honorable practices.  “It can be kept quiet.  Nobody has to know.”

“Excuse me if I think you’re full of shit,” Tony said.  “You want to keep a secret this big inside of an organization whose sole purpose is to expose secrets.  That’s complete and utter–”

“Tony, stop.”  It was the first thing Bruce had said since learning of Lahey’s suicide.  The physicist had been standing stock still, his eyes glazed and his expression empty, staring at Steve’s motionless form on the bed.  His blank face hardened into a determined expression, and he looked up at Stark.  “There’s no choice.  We need what SHIELD has.”

Tony was visibly gritting his teeth.  Clint tried to believe he was acting this way because he was truly worried about Steve and what could happen to him if the wrong people got a hold of him now and not because he was just being an asshole.  Before all of this had happened, he would have assumed the latter.  But Stark glanced at Steve again, and he was clearly worried.  He was frightened about this escalating more into the unknown and the unpredictable and the uncontrollable.  Facing Steve as he had had shaken him.  Clint could only imagine.  That moment before had been just a taste of what Tony, Bruce, and Pepper had barely survived.  “Just Fury?”

Natasha nodded.  “He has the power to keep this under wraps,” she assured, “and he’s smart enough to realize that it needs to be.”  She glanced at Clint again, seeking his support.  Clint nodded.  Banner was right, at any rate.  There was no choice.

Stark’s jaw clenched.  “Fine.  You got a way to get him out of here?  And where are we taking him?”

Natasha glanced to Bruce.  “There’s a place,” she said softly, “up the Hudson a bit.  It’s…  You’ll see when we get there.”

* * *

They did see when they got there.  And Banner looked just a bit livid, justifiably so.  “I take it staying away from me wasn’t always SHIELD’s policy.”

Natasha had the decency to wince with shame.  “No.”

Bruce shook his head sadly, glancing around in a mixture of disgust and awe.  “Why am I not surprised.”

They stood in the middle of a massive underground laboratory.  State of the art computers and holographic terminals surrounded them, at the moment dark and idle.  There were smaller labs and offices spread around the central room, filled with equipment and desks.  Ahead of them was a room that looked like a surgical suite, with a main operating theater flanked by counters loaded with tools and medical paraphernalia and carts that held scanners and defibrillators and vials and vials full of drugs.  Adjacent to that were other rooms, patient rooms with hospital beds and chairs and monitors.  And there was a particularly large room just visible beyond that had a huge glass observation window which ran its entire circumference.  Inside there was a bed, a toilet, and a sink, but nothing else.  Hazmat and biohazard suits and signs were stationed all around the lab, and a clean room connected to the exterior of both the surgical suite and that glass room, that glass room that bore a striking resemblance to the cage on the helicarrier that had nearly sent Thor plummeting to his death during Loki’s war.

Fury stood beside Banner.  His face had been dark with anger and concern for the entire ride to this secret SHIELD research facility buried in Sterling Forest north of New York City.  It was clearly unused.  Clint hadn’t even known it existed.  The Director sighed and his scowl loosened just slightly.  “If it makes you feel better, this place wasn’t designed specifically for you,” he said.

“Not really, no,” Bruce returned.

“These facilities were all part of Project: Containment after you had your accident and we started to realize that the nature of war was changing.  Biological weapons and situations like your own couldn’t be dealt with anywhere near the public.  More than a dozen labs like this are located throughout the country near major metropolitan areas.  They’re meant to be a safe place to assess the extent of a biological threat.”

“Damn convenient,” Stark muttered.  “Where are we putting him?  Because he’s heavy.”

Iron Man had Steve collected in his embrace, Clint helping him with his burden.  Bruce looked around briefly as Natasha went about switching on lights and computer systems.  He sighed as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to do.  “I assume that room back there is… Hulk-proof?”

Fury tipped his head in a bit of shame.  “You assume correctly.”

“Let’s put him there then.  At least he won’t be able to shatter the glass.  I hope.”

They quickly went about getting Steve into the cage (it wasn’t a _cage_ by any means, but Clint could only think of it that way).  Tony staggered inside and set the soldier’s limp body atop the bed.  Steve was deeply unconscious again; they’d been forced to give him another injection of the dendrotoxin on the drive the second he’d begun stirring in the back of the SUV.  Thankfully that had lasted.  Clint knelt beside him.  “Can we untie him now?”

“You think that’s a good idea?” Stark asked.

Clint skewered him with an irate stare.  “I think anything that keeps him calm and not feeling like a prisoner is a good idea, yes,” he shortly answered.

“Fair enough.”  With the gauntlet of his suit, Tony sliced through the metal bar he’d wrapped around Steve’s wrists.  The laser made equally short work of the bindings around his ankles.

Bruce came inside the room, bearing vials and a needle and a tourniquet and gloves.  He snapped those on his hands.  “Let’s do this before he wakes up.  Natasha, fire up the biometric scanners out there?”

She stood at the main computer console outside the room, her hands flying over the touch screens of the various stations.  Stark watched as Banner knelt beside Steve, tied the tourniquet around his bicep, and found a vein in his right arm.  Tony didn’t seem capable of standing still, fidgeting and shifting his weight and eventually leaving back out through the clean room.  He stood beside Romanoff and helped her with the computers.  “So this Project: Containment,” he said, his eyes narrowed as he appraised the screens around them.  “Obviously this place isn’t in use.  So what happened?  SHIELD decided to back off?”

Fury shrugged.  He had hardly taken his gaze off of Steve’s limp form.  Clint watched him with a bit of worry.  He’d never seen the Director so tense.  He wondered if it was because he was taking a risk doing this, keeping this secret from the rest of SHIELD and the World Security Council.  Maybe it was because he was concerned for Rogers (that was surely part of it.  Nick Fury was cold and calculating, but he wasn’t heartless).  Clint had a sinking suspicion, however, that he was afraid that this was going to degrade into a situation that wasn’t controllable or even imaginable.  “The Council decided that keeping threats like this in a remote location invited attack.  It was too much of a risk.  It was also difficult to spread resources so thinly among all these installations, particularly when experts in biomedical and genetic engineering capable of handling situations like these aren’t easy to come by.”

“So where is SHIELD containing things now?” Stark asked.

Clint looked out of the cage to Natasha.  She halted in her work a moment, her brow furrowing in dismay.  “The Fridge,” Fury answered curtly.  “And let’s not talk about that because things that end up there don’t typically come back out.”

Bruce finished drawing Steve’s blood.  “Here, Clint,” he said, pushing a cotton swab over the oozing hole.

Clint took over as Bruce gathered his things.  “What next?”

“We need a CT and an MRI.  I trust you have those here?”  Fury nodded.  “I’m also going to need access to a lab where I can run some genetic testing.  But let’s do the imaging first.  We probably should do an EEG, too.”

“Whatever you think, doctor,” Fury said.

“Tony?”  Stark came back around through the clean room into the cage.  He reached down to move Steve, but the soldier snapped awake.  Tony backpedaled, his eyes widening in sudden and palpable terror.  Steve’s eyes widened, too, and he scrambled like he was jolted across the bed until his back hit the wall.

“Whoa, whoa,” Clint said, putting himself between Steve and Tony.

Steve looked around frantically.  “Where am I?” he demanded.  The Avengers were still, watching their captain worriedly, frightened that at any moment he could slip back into some sort of telekinetic hysteria.  But, thankfully and inexplicably, Steve seemed fairly calm.  “Where?”

Clint fought the urge to glance at Tony.  He needed to stay cool, and at the moment Steve seemed focused on him.  He needed to keep his attention as much as he could.  “Easy, Steve,” he said quietly.  He slowly sat beside his friend on the bed, keeping enough distance to not seem a threat while remaining close enough to not seem afraid or upset.  There was no sense in lying.  This was serious, and hiding that from the soldier seemed cruel and unwise.  He didn’t think he could do it, anyway.  “We’re in a SHIELD research facility.  We brought you here so Doctor Banner can check you over.”

That seemed to be too much for Steve to understand.  He glanced around wildly, and he started trembling again.  Clint didn’t like the fear he saw building.  “Steve?”  He moved closer and firmly set his hand on his friend’s knee.  “Steve?”

Blue eyes, brighter than Clint remembered, shot to him.  They just looked at each other for what felt to be an eternity of tension.  He could feel Tony, stiff and unyielding behind him, and his doubt was so powerful it seemed to be its own force beating against Clint’s back.  Bruce stood still too, paralyzed it seemed, holding his samples and trying not to be mortified.  He could only pray the other two men would be silent and not make any threatening moves.  For the moment, at least, Clint could see that Steve was in control, and he wanted to keep it that way.  “Steve,” he said again, squeezing the other man’s knee.

“Clint,” Steve said softly.

Clint smiled.  “Yeah.”

“What happened?  I thought you were gone.”

“You don’t remember?”

It was obvious that he didn’t.  His face was fractured in confusion.  He worried his lower lip with his teeth, looking around again to Tony and Bruce, taking in his surroundings.  Clint feared anew that where he was would upset him, but he was remarkably grounded.  “I…”  He trailed off, and a wince returned as he frowned.  “Oh, God.”

“Stay calm,” Clint reminded.  “Nobody was hurt.”

“I almost killed Pepper,” Steve whispered.  He closed his eyes and sagged against the wall.  “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Clint responded, praying the stiffness of his voice was enough to ward Tony off from saying anything.  “You didn’t hurt anyone, Steve.”  Steve didn’t seem to believe that for a second, remaining tucked against the wall.  He crumpled in exhaustion, and his brow creased in another grimace.  Stark had mentioned something about this being tied to Steve’s emotions, particularly the bad ones, so the sight of his friend sinking down into grief and guilt was distressing for more than just the obvious reasons.  “Hey, you wanna take a walk?”

That was sufficient to pull Steve from his depression.  He dropped his hands from his face and appraised Clint evenly.  “Where?”

“To the CT scanner.  Come on,” Clint said.  He managed a smile somehow.  “Bruce wants a look at your brain.”

Steve choked on a laugh at that.  “To see what’s left of it?”

Hearing him make a joke, even one as pathetic sounding as that, was immensely relieving.  They had Steve with them right then by whatever grace of God or stroke of good fortune.  Clint didn’t even entertain the thought that maybe his condition was just a transient thing, that maybe it would resolve itself.  It would be too painful if that didn’t happen.  “Something like that,” Clint lightly responded.  “Come on.”

Steve didn’t fight him (thankfully) as he slid an arm around the soldier’s back.  Tony came closer, offering Steve a disarming smile.  “On your feet, Cap.”  With Iron Man’s help, they got Steve standing.  He wavered badly for a moment like he was extremely dizzy, and his face turned a miserable shade of green.  “Don’t you dare puke on my suit,” Tony quipped lightly (though not entirely facetiously).

“How bad is it, Steve?” Bruce asked in concern.  “Pain or nausea?”

Steve swallowed uncomfortably, adamantly trying to abide by Tony’s request.  “Both,” he gasped.  “And bad.  Haven’t felt like this since… since before the serum.”

“We’ll take it really slow,” Clint swore.  “Okay?”

Steve swallowed again and nodded after a second.  They started walking out of the cage toward the clean room.  They moved out to the hall where Natasha and Fury were waiting for them.  “Hey, Rogers,” Natasha greeted softly with a tender smile that belied her reputation.  She took Steve from Stark so that he could go ahead and help Bruce prepare the scanner.  Steve was significantly taller than her (than Clint, too, but for some reason it was more striking compared to her slight frame), but she shouldered his weight like it was nothing.  “Don’t worry about anything, okay?  We’re going to take care of this.”

Steve caught Fury’s eye.  “What are you doing here?” he gasped.  His face grew a shade paler if that was possible.  “Who knows about this?”

“Don’t worry about that, either,” the Director said.

“I don’t want anyone else here.”  Steve’s eyes glimmered in panic again, and Clint leapt to stop it from growing.

“Nobody else is coming.  You’re safe,” Clint assured.  “Come on.  You’re heavy.”

“Told you!” Stark joked.  Clint thanked whatever forces that were that everyone was following his lead and trying to keep this light and casual and non-combative.  It would be far simpler to diagnose and deal with Steve’s condition if he was pliant and cooperative, so whatever they could do to foster a serene, stress-free environment they should do.  Lights flooded the hallway further down.  The group shuffled down the corridor, though more than once Steve groaned and stopped and dropped his head to his chest and breathed through teeth driven tightly together.  Eventually they reached the room with the CT scanner.

Bruce was waiting.  Steve stopped in the door, looking at the bed and the scanner unhappily.  “I need to start an IV for the contrast,” Banner said.  “That okay, Steve?”

It didn’t seem to be, but Steve was more in control of himself than they’d anticipated.  He nodded, pulling away from Natasha and Clint and taking a few halting steps by himself to the bed.  He looked huge on it when he sat.  Bruce moved quickly and with well-practiced precision, inserting the IV in Steve’s arm in a matter of a minute.  He looked down at the captain, warm but not without wariness.  “You’re going to need to lie very still in the chamber.  Think you can do that?”

Steve nodded wearily.  “I can try.”

Bruce patted his shoulder in comfort and gratitude.  “Great.  I’ll do this as fast as possible.  Lie down.”

Steve complied.  Clint stepped closer, taking his friend’s hand for a moment, smiling in encouragement.  “Buck up, right, Rogers?”

“Sure,” Steve said with half a grin.  Clint squeezed his fingers and reluctantly joined the others in the control room.

They ran the scans.  The machine whirred and hummed loudly, but to his credit, Steve stayed still.  Clint didn’t know what he was looking at when the cross-sectional images started to appear on the monitors.  “You think it’s a good idea to be exposing him to more radiation?” Tony asked as he handled the computer.

“I have no clue,” Bruce tiredly admitted.  He leaned over Stark’s shoulder, his quick eyes devouring the data appearing before him.  The others hung back, waiting for Banner to render some sort of opinion.  Clint exchanged a concerned look with Natasha, but she was as lost as he was.  He turned his gaze back to the scanner; he could only see Steve’s feet from his vantage, and they seemed to be thankfully limp and still.  He held his breath, hoping this ended before Steve lost his composure.  “I don’t see anything unusual.”

Fury shook his head.  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

Bruce tipped his head and sighed forcefully enough to puff out his lips.  “I’m not sure.  I don’t have any basis for analyzing this.  Everything seems normal, but all that means is whatever’s causing his problems isn’t obvious structurally.  No tumors, no masses.  No clots or aneurysms or malformations.  His brain looks pristine, shockingly enough.”  Bruce didn’t look all that surprised actually.  “We should still get an MRI, but it probably won’t tell us anything more.  I need to run genetic tests and take a look on a cellular level.  We’re going to need to do another lumbar puncture.”

Clint winced.  The last time they’d done that had been awful enough.  “Is that necessary?”

“Better than a brain biopsy,” he responded.

“How much time will all of this take?” Fury asked.

“Why?” snapped Stark.  The inventor turned in his chair to glare at the other man.  “You got someplace better to be?”

“Rogers nearly destroyed the top half of your tower, Stark,” Fury irately returned.  “And I doubt that’ll be the end of it.  We need to get a handle on this quickly, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Why?” Stark demanded again.  “Before SHIELD finds out Lahey’s little experiment turned out to be a success?  Then what happens, Nick?  Men with guns come and take him away to your Fridge?”

“Stark, stop it,” Natasha coldly ordered.  “This isn’t helping.”

He skewered her with an icy glare.  “No, what would have helped is having Lahey around to answer some goddamn questions.  How is it exactly that a man in the custody of the world’s best soldiers and spies manages to kill himself?  What, did you forget to take the sheets out of his cell this morning?”

“Don’t,” she warned, and now her tone was thick with malice.

Clint couldn’t stand to hear the bickering anymore.  The room was cleared to enter, and he stormed through the door and to the table as its motors moved it out from the scanner.  Steve sat up as soon as he could, turning to his side and promptly throwing up.  Clint grimaced and ran to his side, setting a firm hand to the other man’s back as his stomach intently tried to invert itself within him.  “It’s alright,” he said, turning helpless eyes back to the control room.  Bruce ran out, but Clint didn’t know why any of them bothered.  There wasn’t anything they could do.

Steve suffered until he was reduced to a shivering, sweating mess.  Even then he continued to dry heave painfully.  “Damn it,” he groaned, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth.  He yanked the IV clear out of his arm as he doubled over.

“It’s alright,” Clint said again.  He felt like a goddamn broken record.

“It’s not alright!” Steve yelled.  Something above them shattered.  Glass fell down on them in a piercing rain.  Steve seemed surprised, raising his hand above his head to protect himself, but that only succeeded in causing more things to break.  The fluorescent lights exploded.  Steve groaned in pain but even more in exasperation.  He threw his hands out and the shards were flung to the other side of the room before they could strike anyone.

Clint stood still for a moment in surprise.  The glass sparkled against the far wall where it had been driven into the sheet rock.  “Hey,” he said, forcing a smile to his face though he didn’t feel happy in the least.  “You controlled it.”

Steve sobbed once, his eyes filled with frightened and frustrated tears.  “Is that a good thing?”

Honestly Clint didn’t know.

* * *

They did the MRI, which thankfully proceeded without any complications.  Bruce looked unhappy with the results, though not so much because there was something wrong.  It was the _lack_ of anything substantive that was frustrating him, even though it was what he’d expected.  Still, he kept all the images so that he could examine them more closely later.

They helped Steve change out of his clothes into some loose-fitting scrubs.  Bruce had redressed his burned shoulder with antibiotic salve and fresh bandages.  He’d been completely silent since the incident in the CT scanner, like he’d just shut off and withdrawn into himself.  Clint was worried about the vacant expression in his eyes, the pliant limpness of his body, his complete unwillingness to interact with them beyond the barest and simplest of answers.  They prepared him for the spinal tap.  There was no way to numb Steve to the discomfort, and the procedure had been miserably unpleasant back at the SHIELD infirmary when the soldier hadn’t been suffering so acutely.  But Steve had agreed without even needing to hear Bruce’s logic, and with Tony’s and Clint’s hands gently restraining him and Natasha’s wrapped firmly in his own for comfort, they’d gotten it done.  He didn’t realize until afterward how hard Steve had struggled to not crush Natasha’s fingers in his.  That made him wonder how hard Steve had struggled to keep everything else under control, which in turn made him wonder if Steve was truly figuring out how to contend with his newfound powers.  He didn’t feel brave enough to even bring it up.

Steve’s steps were wobbly at best as they headed back to the cage.  Natasha helped him walk inside while Tony and Bruce worked outside, configuring the biometric sensors to provide continuous reports of Steve’s vitals.  They were talking about the data, about DNA analysis and needing to pull in the computer cluster at Stark Industries to run simulations faster.  Clint stood outside the clean room, his arms folded over his chest.  Inside the cell, Black Widow disappeared before his eyes, leaving behind a soft voice and gentle hands and an encouraging smile.  Clint watched her get Steve a glass of water, which he sipped slowly at her command.  Her hand lingered on his shoulder and she said something to him that Clint couldn’t hear.  She turned and walked out, and that moment of compassion was gone behind an angry, helpless visage.

Fury came to stand beside him.  “Never thought I’d see Captain America in a cage built for the Hulk,” he quietly declared.  Clint stiffened at that, settling a hard look on his superior.  But there was only regret on Fury’s face.  “I’ve got Hill downloading all of our data on Lahey to the servers here.  Level eight clearance.  It will be untraceable.”

“Somebody’s going to figure it out,” Clint reminded him.  As much as they wanted to believe they could keep this quiet, the media was all over the day’s events, both the robbery Steve had stopped and the explosions rocking the top of Stark Tower.  “You think someone at SHIELD would want…”

“Somebody warned Lahey’s thugs that you and the Cap were headed their way.  And I don’t believe in coincidences.  Whoever it was planned to bring Rogers, Lahey, and Banner together.”

Clint didn’t like the sound of this.  The implications were disturbing to say the least.  If this whole thing was some sort of carefully construed plot, then somebody at SHIELD had betrayed them.    Somebody had gone to great lengths to have this experiment to succeed.  And that somebody (and whoever it was they were working for) might want access to the results.

Fury’s eye narrowed.  “Keep this secure, Barton.  I need to get back to HQ before somebody notices I’ve been out of communication.  Use secure channels through Hill if you need to reach me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Fury stalked away.  If the hard lines of his posture were any indication, he was going to go back to SHIELD Headquarters and start digging for answers himself.  Fury was still the best spy in the world, the most relentless and the most ruthless.  If there was a mole for AIM in SHIELD, he would find it.

Clint stood still for a moment longer.  He watched Steve sit listlessly on the bed, wavering and seemingly teetering on the brink of collapse, staring brokenly at the tiled floor but not seeing anything.  He could tell the pain was back.  He hurt while he stared at his friend as broken, lost, and defeated as he was.  This wasn’t right.  _None_ of this was right.

He stepped inside the clean room.  Beyond that there was a supply closet, where he grabbed a few pillows and blankets.  When he walked back, Steve looked up.  There was blood dripping down his face from his nose, and he grimaced, reaching for a tissue from the box on the end of the bed.  Clint bit hard on his tongue to keep his emotions in check, coming closer and setting the bedding aside to help.  He grabbed the box.  “Tilt your head forward,” he ordered softly.  He handed Steve a few tissues.

Steve swallowed, looking decidedly sick again as he tried to stem the flow of blood.  “You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Well, I am.”  Clint took the mess away and handed him a new set of tissues.  They were silent for a moment, and the lab was so quiet and still that Clint felt like he could hear Steve’s heart pounding just by watching the veins pulse in his neck.  “Why didn’t you tell anyone this was happening?”

Steve experimentally pulled the tissues away and found the nosebleed was better.  He sniffed weakly, wiping his face clean.  He was shaking again.  Shaking badly.  “I just…  I was stupid.  I didn’t want to admit to myself that something was wrong.  I wasn’t strong enough.”

Clint sat beside him on the bed.  He wrapped an arm around Steve’s shoulders and pulled him closer.  He knew Steve was proud, but more than that, he knew he kept things hidden.  He kept his injuries, physical and emotional, under guard.  He didn’t do it because of some sort of martyr complex or because he thought lowly of himself.  He did it because he was strong, because he could take the hits and keep fighting, and because people looked to him for strength and courage especially in the darkest of hours.  He didn’t want anyone to be hurt or troubled or even discouraged on his account. 

There was a time and place for that.  It wasn’t here and it wasn’t now.  “You’re the one who always tells me not to go it alone,” he said.

Steve looked down.  “I know,” he whispered.  Clint watched him struggle with his emotions.  He’d never fathomed that something like that could herald so much devastation.  A period of uncomfortable silence followed.  Tears built anew in Steve’s eyes, but he didn’t cry.  “Back there…  That wasn’t the first time I controlled it.  I killed someone today.”

“Stark said that.  You didn’t have a choice.  And it sounds like you saved far more people than you hurt.”

“You don’t understand.  I was so angry, so out of control.  I could have killed Pepper.  And Tony.  I could have–”

“You didn’t.  Come on, Steve.  Hold it together.  Whatever this is, it’s feeding off your emotions.  You have to be calm and cool.  You can do it.”  He wondered if Steve could.  He tried to seem sure of it, confident and composed himself, but he’d never seen Steve so rattled.  There seemed to be very little left of Captain America, of the man who never wavered and led by example and stood for everything good and pure in the world.  All his strength and power and steadiness had been stripped away, and he was bleeding inside.

“You have to stop me when it happens again,” Steve roughly ordered.  “I can’t hurt anyone else.  I can’t.  Please.  I – I can’t stop myself.”

“Let’s not worry about that right now.”

“I’m scared, Clint,” Steve whispered.

Hearing Steve admit that was almost too much to bear.  Clint stood and grabbed the pillows and blankets.  “You need to sleep,” he said firmly.

Steve closed eyes ringed in darkness.  “I can’t.”

“You have to try.”

“The nightmares…  I can’t.”

“Hey.”  Clint knelt in front of his friend and put his hands on Steve’s shoulders.  “I’ll stay with you.”

Steve’s pained expression contorted further with dismay.  “You shouldn’t.  It’s too dangerous.”

“All the times you stood by me,” Clint said.  “You’d walk with me to the end of the line.  I’d do the same for you no matter what.”

Steve’s eyes widened slightly at that, and he stared at Clint like he was seeing a ghost.  The hazy gleam bothered Clint terribly for a second, and he worried that Steve was sinking back into the delirium again.  But he didn’t.  He actually smiled, a real and genuine one.  It was a ghost of his normal smile, but it was something, at least.  Clint felt warm and right seeing it, and he smiled, too.

He put the pillow on the bed and helped Steve lay back.  He drew the blanket over the soldier’s shivering body.  He stood and headed to the wall panel outside and dimmed the lights.  Then he returned and sat on the floor with his back to the wall next to Steve’s bed so the other man could see him.

Clint reached over and grabbed Steve’s hand and squeezed tight.  “I’ve got you.”

Steve didn’t nod or speak.  Clint watched him hang on for a few minutes, watched the tears fill his eyes again as he stared up at the ceiling.  He blinked them away.  A few seconds later exhaustion won out, and he fell asleep.

Clint sighed slowly and gently let his hand go.  He tried to clear his own mind, knowing he should rest while he could.  But he didn’t.  He couldn’t stop the dark thoughts from tormenting him.  He closed his eyes, but his own terrors were there.  Steve screaming.  Steve writhing in that chamber.  Steve dead in his arms.

He wondered if there was any way to wake up from this nightmare.


	10. Chapter 10

The lab was quiet, eerily so.  Bruce worked alone, bathed in the light of the monitors surrounding him.  Outside this halo, things were dark and seemingly distant and not quite real.  The silence was deep, and in its hold he could hear minute and insignificant things like they were as loud as thunder: computer fans humming, air being forced through vents, walls creaking, fluorescent bulbs charging and rattling as electricity jolted through the halogen gas within and excited electrons and produced light.  These small details were somehow incredibly distracting as he tried to focus.  With the increased speed of the massive CPU clusters at Stark Industries out in California, the computers were churning through data.  Still it was going unusually slowly.  So he was trying to dissect the MRI and CT images more carefully while he waited, but his mind was drifting.  He was tired.  He was so goddamn tired.

And when his mind drifted, his gaze inevitably went with it.  He looked up dazedly.  Inside the cage (the cage built for him, which still didn’t sit well with him no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that it was okay), Steve was sleeping.  More or less.  Mostly less.  He’d been like this the last few hours, and any sleep he’d gotten was thanks in no small part to Clint’s constant presence.  The SHIELD agent hadn’t left Steve’s side, even though he as well looked absolutely exhausted.  It was a constant battle to keep Steve calm.  He hadn’t been exaggerating earlier that day (was it still the same day?  Bruce wasn’t sure anymore) when he’d said his dreams were violent.  Peace was tenuous and fleeting and easily shattered.  Steve would be still and deeply asleep one second, and the next he’d be caught in the throes of a nightmare.  Bruce had been trying to ignore the desperate scenes in front of him, trying not to see the other man screaming and crying and fighting against demons from his past and his nightmares.  Steve’s dreams seemed to bleed together, coming fast and hard and randomly, and Clint was struggling mightily to offer comfort even as the room rattled ominously around him.  They were horrors from World War II, from the ice, from the Battle of New York and missions for SHIELD since then.  They were miseries from his childhood.

Bruce hadn’t been able to ignore those.  When Steve’s cries had turned from desperate orders about the war to the soft, small pleas of a child, he couldn’t help but watch.  The Hulk stirred within him as he heard those whimpers.  They weren’t entirely intelligible, a mixture of sobs and begging, but Bruce understood all too well what this was about.  He knew that fear too well, that level of pain and anger.  He knew it because he’d heard himself cry those same helpless cries.  His father had been a monster, a real piece of work, and his twisted view of life had scarred Bruce deeply.  The beatings had been bad, but that hadn’t been the worst of it.  It had been the hatred, the degradation, the deep-seated bruising to his soul.  They were some of his worst memories, his blackest moments, the parts of his life that had led to the birth of his anger.  He had started to wonder in the wake of his accident if his father hadn’t been right, if some inclination to be cruel and vicious and hateful wasn’t genetic.  Even if his father hadn’t hit him and hit his mother, would he still have turned out a slave to his rage?  It was a disturbing thought.

It was even more disturbing that apparently Steve’s father had beaten him, too.  It was absolutely shocking that Steve had endured something like this because he’d hidden it so well.  Steve had said that Dan’s drug was making him recall things he hadn’t thought about in years; Bruce supposed it made some sense that he might have repressed these bad memories.  After all, underneath the mantle of Captain America, Steve was still human, and ignoring painful events was a tried and true defense mechanism.  But it was still upsetting.  It was common knowledge that Steve had been in a lot of fights as a boy and a young man; it was part of the legend of Captain America, that even before the serum Steve stood up against bullies and protected those who’d needed protection at any cost to himself.  Bruce would have never imagined this sad twist to the tale.  He would never have imagined that he and Steve would share this common scar, that Steve’s father had abused him, that Captain America had grown out of a past that damaged.  And that made his own anger mount again, and not just because someone as good as Steve Rogers had been beaten as a child, but because Steve had endured a similar hardship and come out of it so much better.  Stronger, not weaker.  More in control, not less.  Endowed with valor and integrity and courage.  It had taken something _this drastic_ , some sort of insane, violent chemical process that no one could explain, to bring out Steve’s demons.  Bruce struggled with his all the time.  He couldn’t even begin to hide them.

That brought all of his dark insecurities pressing closer and closer, and the Hulk kept shifting uneasily in the back of his mind.

And he wasn’t alone in his indignant shock at the horrors coming to the surface.  If Clint’s disgusted and angry expression was any indication, he understood, too.  He offered up his comfort sympathetically and selflessly, holding Steve still when he shook so badly, murmuring solace (though Bruce was fairly certain Steve was too far gone in delirium to hear anything the SHIELD agent said), trying to get him through his nightmares to the brief periods of relative rest between them.  He must have been terrified; more than once Steve’s unhinged strength and new abilities broke loose and Clint ended up thrown to the floor or nearly across the room.  However, he kept waving off help from those outside, standing up without so much as a wince and wiping away blood or holding his ribs, and heading back to his friend’s side.  He was constant and unintimidated where all of them had one time or another faltered in the face of Steve’s power.  Bruce found himself admiring that.

Still, after hours of this, Clint was wearing down.  Even if he wouldn’t admit it, it was obvious enough, and Natasha was in the room with him now.  They were both sitting on the floor beside the bed, staring at Steve as he fitfully slept, silent and catching their breaths and tense with worry.  Bruce watched them share a few words.  He doubted Romanoff would ever be so unguarded as to visibly offer up comfort through a hug, but she was sitting as close to Clint as possible without having him in her embrace.  They were taking this moment to recover, praying it would last longer than all of the moments before it.  Bruce studied Steve’s vitals on the monitors stationed outside the cage for a second.  He sighed and went back to his work.

“Well, apparently not listening is a chronic condition around here.”  Tony’s voice was ridiculously loud in the silence.  He emerged from the shadows down the hall.  He’d taken off his armor some time ago, which made it obvious he was limping a little, probably due to his still tender abdomen that had no doubt been jostled and aggravated by the day’s struggles.  It seemed a lifetime ago that Tony had been shot.  “Pepper seems bound and determined to stay in the city.  She won’t go to Malibu.  Something about averting a PR disaster and dealing with a rampant rumor that Captain Virginity and I are having a tiff.  Over her of all things.  Yeah, they’re saying she’s having a slice of American pie on the side.  You know.  And we trashed my tower over this love triangle.  Apparently those assholes at TMZ are all over this, taking bets on who won.  Which is freaking retarded.  I won, hands down.  If she wants to have a press conference, it should be about that.”  Tony shook his head when his jokes all fell flat.  Worry lined his face.  “And last I checked you can talk and text from pretty much anywhere, so having to stay on the East Coast to handle this sounds like utter BS.  Is she always this stubborn?”

“Yes.”

Tony grunted and came to stand beside him, wincing though not from the pain.  “She also said your lab is pretty much trashed.  Trashed like completely destroyed.  Burned in some places even.  So sorry about that.”

“Doesn’t matter now.”

Tony’s gaze settled on the scene inside the cage.  “How’s he doing?”

Bruce shook his head.  “Not good,” he answered quietly.  He glanced at the monitors again, but of course nothing had improved.  “His heart rate is continually elevated.  Respiratory rate, as well.  This thing is putting his body through hell.  Super soldier or no, having what equates to a massive panic attack almost constantly for hours is dangerous.  And that’s not counting whatever damage Dan’s drug is doing to him.  Pain that severe has to mean something, and whatever it is, you can bet it’s really bad.”

Tony was of course concerned at that.  He was doing his damnedest to seem nonchalant, but Bruce saw through it.  They were all too tired for that sort of bullshit bravado to be even the least bit convincing.  “Wouldn’t damage have shown up on the CT or MRI?”

Bruce shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I have no idea what we’re dealing with.  I looked the scans over more carefully and there’s some evidence of vascular injury, but the serum must be healing it fast enough that it’s not amounting to anything.”  _Yet,_ was his unspoken, pessimistic thought.

Tony heard what he didn’t say.  “And if it gets worse?”

“I don’t know!” Bruce shouted.  The anger always simmering inside him was abruptly boiling, and breathing through his nose was all he could do to stay in control.  “Everybody is looking to me for answers, but I don’t have any!”

“Whoa, calm down,” Tony quickly said.  He looked at Bruce warily, involuntarily stiffening.  In all the time they’d spent together, the Hulk had always been so tightly under wraps.  Bruce had always been so calm and collected.  Mellow.  Tony was scared, and rightly so.  He’d already been pummeled and nearly killed by one uncontrollable Avenger that day.

But Bruce couldn’t just get his anger back once it was loose.  Nobody ever seemed to understand that.  Still he knew it wasn’t enough to push him over.  Not now.  Not yet.  “I don’t want to be calm!  I want to _fix_ this!  I did this to him, damn it, and I need to make it right!”

He hadn’t meant to say that.  He’d been feeling it for days before this, ever since Dan had put a gun to Tony’s head and demanded that they try his experiment on Captain America.  He couldn’t keep it in now.  Not anymore.  Somehow seeing Steve reliving his childhood horrors was the one thing that was too much.  “You did this to him.  Right, I forgot about that.  Never mind the gun to my head and Barton’s head.  Never mind there was no choice.  Never mind it was Lahey’s idea in the first place.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bruce insisted.  “Dan’s dead.  And even if you think I had no choice, I was the one in charge of the Gamma exposure, remember, because Dan couldn’t figure it out.  I’m just as much to blame.  I screwed up, and Steve will be lucky if he dies before someone gets a hold of him and weaponizes him or worse.”

“That’s bleak,” Tony muttered.

“You said it yourself.  This is going to get to the point where we’ll need to kill him to keep all of us safe.”

“I was full of shit.  And how do you know you screwed up?  Maybe this is what was _supposed_ to happen.  Fate or destiny or whatever.”

Bruce rolled his eyes in disparagement.  “You don’t believe in that nonsense.”

“I didn’t believe that a man could move things with his brain, either, and look at what happened.”  Bruce didn’t want to hear this, but he had no choice but to stand there and listen.  “Maybe this was the best thing that could have happened.  If it hadn’t, we’d all be dead.  I said this before.  You need to listen to me.  He would have been _dead_ otherwise.”  Bruce ground his teeth and looked away irately.  _Like dead is worse._ Tony quickly went on.  “You think it’s your fault.  Cap thinks it’s his fault for going bat-shit crazy because his brain is torturing him.  It’s my fault for not noticing sooner that this was happening.  Barton’s for not preventing them from taking him hostage and for not being around before when Steve needed.  Fury’s.  SHIELD’s.  So it’s all our faults.  There.  Done.”

“Don’t play this down, Tony.  Please.”

“I’m not.  This is where we are.  We’ve had no choice since we walked into Lahey’s lab, maybe even before then.  It sure as shit feels like that.  But we have a choice now.  We can either piss and moan about what happened, or we can try to make it better.  You said it yourself: you did this to him, so you can fix it.”  Tony wasn’t turning his own words against him to hurt him.  He was just stripping the emotions away and leaving the facts.  “You fixed yourself.”

Bruce made a sour face.  “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your anger issues.  You worked through them.”

“My anger issues.  Last I checked, the Hulk is as dangerous as ever.”

“Not from what I saw,” Tony corrected.  “The Other Guy could’ve crushed Rogers back there, but he didn’t.  I know he wanted to.  You made him hold back.”  He cocked an eyebrow and leaned into the lab bench.  “You ever think about measuring things not by the few times you lost control but by all the times you didn’t?”

He hadn’t.  Not really, at any rate.  To him, it was a constant struggle marked by waxing and waning restraint.  To him, seconds were continually filled with anxiety and fear, and it was like a shadow over his life.  He never trusted himself.  What if someone pushed him too far.  What if frustration got the better of him.  What if he lost his temper.  It was a war that never ended.  There was never victory.  Hell, he wasn’t even sure what constituted victory.  He’d been driven once to find a cure, but he’d given up that painful and fruitless quest and tried to just simply accept what he was.  Maybe that was what Tony meant by working through it.  And he didn’t think so much, didn’t worry about it so much, anymore.  Not since New York.  Not since the Avengers.

So he thought it about it that way, measuring by the minutes he’d been strong.  He felt a little better.  “Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” Tony agreed.  “So what can I do to help?”

Bruce took a deep breath, forcing himself to focus.  He reached for his cup of coffee, which had long since gone cold, and took a drink.  “Not much, I don’t think,” he answered.  “It’s running through the genetic analysis right now.  Even with your computing cluster, it seems to be having a hard time getting it done.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yeah, I guess so.  And I’ve been trying to develop another sedative that won’t put him down as deeply but should hopefully last longer.  I don’t like the stress all of this is putting on his body.”  Bruce looked down at the few vials spread around the lab bench.  “It’s the best I can do.”

“Maybe we should give him some now,” Tony murmured, staring unhappily into the cage ahead of them.  “How long can he go on like this?”  That forced Bruce to look up.  Steve was coming around again.  Clint was at the bedside, pulling the ailing man into his arms for comfort.  Bruce could hear Steve talking.  His voice was rough from misuse.  Natasha came with some water.  Clint helped Rogers sit up, which seemed to be a very bad idea because he immediately jolted to his feet and staggered to the toilet and threw up.  Bruce closed his eyes in dismay.  Tony was rigid beside him, his face tight with a disgusted wince.  “Fun,” he whispered.

“Bruce?” Clint called from inside the chamber.  He crouched beside Rogers, an arm thrown around the other man as he heaved.  The archer looked to him plaintively, his expression tense and his eyes dark with worry and a silent imploration that something be done to ease Steve’s suffering.  Bruce released a slow breath and grabbed one of the needles from the cart alongside the lab bench and one of the vials of his new concoction.  It should have been tested more thoroughly, but he didn’t think Steve could get through much more of this.  He rushed to the chamber and through the clean room, filling the syringe as he went.

Steve was gasping, his face reddened.  He was crumpled on the floor next to the toilet.  There was dark blood dripping viscously from his nose and his ears.  He didn’t seem entirely with it, partially asleep perhaps, but mostly imprisoned by agony.  His face was contorted and he couldn’t catch his breath.  But when he saw Bruce come in with the needle, his eyes widened.  “No, please,” he moaned.

“Steve, you need sleep,” Natasha calmly insisted.  “This will help.”

The soldier curled in on himself.  Bruce warily remained back, afraid at any moment Steve’s telekinesis would break free.  The last thing they needed was another violent altercation.  But the other man was simply too spent and in too much pain to do anything other than tremble on the floor.  Clint knelt beside him, a comforting hand rubbing Steve’s uninjured shoulder, and looked up at Bruce.  He nodded.  Bruce tentatively came closer.  He decided to simply attack, moving swiftly to stick the needle in Steve’s thigh.  Steve didn’t fight, didn’t jerk away, didn’t even really seem to notice. 

Natasha had gotten a washcloth from the supply closet that she wet in the sink.  Carefully she knelt at Steve’s head and wiped away the blood.  “What’s happening to him?” she asked as she worked.  Steve’s eyes drifted and glazed in disorientation as the sedative began to work.  Bruce took his limp hand and counted his pulse.  Even with the drug, his heart was still pumping at a wavering, frightening pace.  “Why is he in so much pain?”

“I’m not sure,” Bruce admitted.

“This is killing him,” Clint softly declared.  He sat back on his rear, tiredly scrubbing a hand down his face.  Steve’s breathing evened out slightly, but not enough to be considered calm or peaceful.  His eyes didn’t entirely close, bright and blue underneath the parted lids.  His face was so pale underneath the darkness of the stubble covering his jaw and the heavy bags surrounding his eyes.  He wasn’t quite unconscious – he seemed catatonic, almost – and Bruce didn’t know if that was an effect of his newly devised sedative or Steve’s condition or a combination of both.  He supposed he had to cut his losses and simply be happy that Steve wasn’t suffering so acutely any more.  They could at least take a moment to rest.

Clint didn’t want to rest.  “He’s going to die unless we can stop it.”

Bruce didn’t have the heart to argue with that.  “He might.  I don’t know.”

“Hey, Banner, your analysis is done.  You should come take a look.”  Tony’s voice cut through the miserable silence.

Bruce climbed to his feet, his joints aching and his body rebelling against him.  “Let’s get him back into bed,” he quietly ordered.  The two SHIELD agents stood as well, and together the three of them managed to lift Steve’s large, weighty form and move him back to the bed.  Clint moved the pillow under Steve’s head and Natasha draped the blanket back over his body.  Both of them looked angry and frustrated and sorrowful.  Bruce tried not to let any of that get to him as he tossed the used needle in the sharps container outside the cage and headed back to the main console.

Tony cocked an eyebrow at him as he approached.  Even in the dim light, Bruce could see he was troubled and perplexed.  “Granted this isn’t exactly my field of expertise, but I’m pretty sure _that_ ’s not right,” he said, folding his arms over his chest and backing away from the screen.

Bruce was so tired that for a moment he didn’t register that he should be alarmed from Tony’s words.  Then his eyes focused on the results piling onto the display.  “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

“What?” Clint demanded as he quickly made his way around to the main console.  Natasha followed, narrowing her eyes in confusion as she appraised the images.  “What are we looking at?”

“Steve’s DNA,” Bruce supplied.  Awe crept into his voice.  “It’s…  I don’t know how to describe it.  It’s in a state of flux.”

Clint looked completely lost.  When Bruce offered nothing further, he asked, “And that’s bad?”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bruce murmured.  His quick eyes digested the data in front of him in complete disbelief.  “No wonder the analysis took so long.”

“Alright, alright,” Barton said.  He was clearly trying to keep his frustration in check.  “Explain it to us.  With words we can understand.”

Bruce took a deep breath and tried to gather his thoughts.  His mind was racing, pouring over the discovery they’d just made, whirling with the possible explanations.  It defied everything he knew about genetics and biology, _everything_ he took for steadfast and immutable.  It was mind-boggling.  “Steve’s DNA is enhanced by the super soldier serum, but it functions fundamentally the same as a normal person’s.  And it’s identical, cell to cell to cell, just like a normal person’s.  At least it should be, within a statistically normal amount of random variation and mutation that can occur during the replication process, but that’s a small percentage that couldn’t account for–”

“Banner, English,” Barton reminded with forced patience.

“His DNA is _changing_.  From these readings, it looks like it’s happening almost continuously.  You see this chain of nucleotides?  It’s not here.  Or here.”  Bruce pointed at a couple of other DNA strands graphically represented on the monitor.  He swiped his fingers across the touch screen, looking through some other samples from other cells.  “But it is here.  The computer detected this chain in approximately 37% of the CSF cells I gave it.  Other chains were less common.  Others were more.  This is incredible.  Dan’s drug is causing his DNA to mutate constantly.”

Tony shook his head.  “That’s not possible.”

“Look at it, Tony!” Bruce gasped, sharing a perplexed glance with his friend.  “I have no idea if that’s what it was supposed to do, but that’s what it’s doing.”  The computer had begun to identify the base-pair sequence that seemed to be the end product of the mutation.  Bruce brought it up, looking over it carefully.  He didn’t see anything obvious about it, other than the fact it was long and complex and composed of nucleotides he’d _never seen_ _before_ (that was astounding in and of itself).  He was familiar with the base-pair sequences of a few common genes, but this was far beyond anything he’d ever studied.  The human genome ordered in the millions upon millions of base-pairs, with millions of variations of genes on each of the 23 chromosome pairs.  The amount of mathematical variability was astounding.  But this was far beyond understanding.  Whatever it was, it was obviously responsible for Steve’s condition.  And it hadn’t been there before.  “This sequence seems to be whatever the end result is.  It’s all over his DNA in some form or another.”

“What is it?” Natasha asked.

Bruce sighed.  “Figuring that out is going to take a lot more analysis than this.  And it’s even more complicated because of the super soldier serum.”  At their questioning glances, Bruce went on.  “The serum is a part of Steve’s genetic code; that’s why it’s so difficult to reproduce it.  Nobody really understands how the serum works.  People have been studying it for years and no one’s come close to mapping out how the serum has altered his DNA.  It’s integrated completely into his genetic material.  And if Dan’s serum is somehow interacting with that…”  And then it occurred to him.  Why Steve’s DNA was shifting from moment to moment and cell to cell.  Why Steve’s telekinesis was so erratic and uncontrollable.  Why his mental state seemed to vacillate between cognizance and madness.  Why he was in so much pain.  “Of course…” he breathed.  How could he have been so blind?  So stupid?  It was so damn _obvious_.  “The serum’s not interacting with it.  It’s _fighting_ it.”

Tony seemed to understand, as smart and quick as he was.  His face fractured in unhappiness with the dawning realization.  Clint and Natasha, however, were as lost now as they had been moments before.  Bruce shook his head and tried to explain.  “The super soldier serum made Steve big and strong and fast and turned him into Captain America, but it did far more than that.  It’s the reason he can’t get sick, the reason he heals so much faster than a normal person.  It’s the reason he’s so resilient.  It’s the reason he survived in the ice for seventy years.”  Bruce paced with nervous energy as his thoughts raced.  “It’s the reason he survived Dan’s procedure.  The serum _protects_ him.  His DNA seems to be constantly rewriting itself because the serum is trying to stop Dan’s drug.  The drug is altering his genetic code to produce these new abilities, and the serum is altering it back.  It’s fighting _back_.  The two aren’t compatible.”  This went against everything Dan had hypothesized would happen.  Maybe the super soldier serum had made it possible for Steve to survive the initial infusion and radiation exposure, but in the long run it wasn’t making it more likely that the experiment would succeed.  It was having the opposite effect.  “I was right.  The whole thing was fundamentally doomed to failure.”

“Are you saying–”

“Dan’s drug is the ultimate invading body, attacking him on a genetic level.  It’s the worst kind of disease.  And the serum is defending him.  It’s like…  It’s–”

“It’s a war,” Clint said softly.  His hazel eyes sharpened with sudden comprehension.  He didn’t look comforted by any of this.  “And Steve’s caught in the crossfire.”

“Exactly,” Bruce quickly confirmed.  “The serum is trying to prevent Dan’s drug from changing him.  I don’t know _how_ it’s happening, if the Gamma exposure somehow kicked the serum into high gear, but if the serum’s fighting…”

“Maybe this could end all on its own?”

It was a possibility.  Unfortunately, Bruce didn’t think it was very likely.  He started to wonder why it had taken so long after the incident for Steve’s powers to appear.  He really had no data from which to form a conclusion, but it made sense that the serum _had_ been fighting this from the beginning.  That explained why they hadn’t seen any changes in Steve’s DNA two weeks ago or any effects on his physiology or neurologic function.  But that could only mean that the serum was weakening.  Losing the battle.  As time had worn on, it had lost ground slowly but steadily until the damage had begun to manifest itself.  The nightmares and memories and migraines.  And then the telekinesis.

Tony had come to the same conclusion.  He looked at Natasha, unwilling perhaps to thrash her hopes, before shifting his gaze to Bruce.  He was determined, but the awful reality pushed fear into his voice.  “We need to find a way to help.  Give the serum bigger guns.  Bolster its defenses.  _Something._ ”

Bruce was flying through the results, trying to gleam any indication of the speed at which the DNA sequence that looked to be the result of Dan’s drug was appearing in Steve’s cells.  He had to collect more data to calculate a true transformation rate, but if Steve’s deterioration over the last 24 hours was any indication, it was moving fast.  “I’d love to do that,” he said, trying to keep the emotion from his voice, “but there isn’t enough time to figure out how.”

“Well, we have to,” Tony returned sharply.

“We don’t know how the super soldier serum works!  Do you have any idea what you’re proposing?  A project of that magnitude would require years, maybe even decades, of study by a team of geneticists and biochemists to even begin to figure out–”

“Steve doesn’t have that long,” Clint said worriedly.

Bruce shook his head.  “No,” he agreed.  _One way or another._

Clint clenched his jaw.  “Is it going to kill him?” he asked again.

Bruce sighed again, looking up at the monitors displaying Steve’s vitals.  The sedative had calmed the acute stress response, but not enough to alleviate his concerns.  He still didn’t have any answers.  “It’s impossible to know.”

Clint let loose a short, pained breath and looked away angrily.  “Get whatever data you need.  Run more tests.  _Do_ something,” Tony snapped.

Bruce knew what was coming, and he didn’t want to hear it.  He knew he had a tendency to be cynical, to let his pessimism get the better of him.  Hell, he thought he had a pretty compelling reason for being that way.  But this wasn’t being pessimistic.  It was being _realistic_.  “Tony, I don’t even know where to start.  You’re asking me to isolate the super soldier serum, which no one has _ever_ successfully done, figure out how it creates cellular resistance and regeneration on a genetic level, which no one _ever_ has, and, as if that’s not impossible enough, figure out how a drug, which, by the way, apparently has caused DNA mutations using nucleotides that I didn’t know _existed_ until now – figure out _how_ that works, and then figure out how to make the super soldier serum _defeat_ it.  That’s what you want.  And you want me to do this as fast as possible no less.  It can’t be done!”

“Doctor,” Natasha said quietly, trying to quell Bruce’s mounting frustration, “you’re the best expert we have on Doctor Erskine’s work.  If you can’t do it…”

“I can try,” Bruce said, “but you have to understand what we’re up against.”

“We need a miracle.  Got it.”  Tony brushed it all aside like it wasn’t impossible (which was what he always did) and started preparing the computers to run more simulations.  “Let’s do another lumbar puncture while he’s unconscious.  We need to better isolate the genetic sequence this thing is trying to create.  The computer’s got it at only 84% accurate at this point.”

“Tony.”  Bruce released a slow breath.  “Listen.  I was worried about this before, but seeing what’s going on is making me think that we haven’t scratched the surface of what Steve is capable of doing.”

That gave them all pause.  The lab grew completely silent again.  Tony dropped his hands from the touch screen and turned to face his friend.  “What?  Moving things with his mind wasn’t serious enough?”

“I don’t think he’s just moving things with his mind.  I think he’s _controlling_ energy.”  The others stared at him.  Tony with unabashed shock.  Clint with a mixture of fear and confusion.  Natasha with worry.  Bruce licked his lips and wrung his hands together with his own anxiety.  He’d been thinking about this for a few hours now – about the mechanics of _how_ Steve was actually performing these telekinetic feats – and there wasn’t an easy answer, or even a complex one he could readily accept.  Bruce didn’t have a lot of evidence to support what he was about propose, but he had that sinking feeling in the bottom of his chest that it was right.  “I need more data.  An fMRI while he’s having an episode would help if I didn’t think he’d probably destroy the machine before I could get any useful images.”

“Controlling energy.  What does that mean?” Natasha asked.

“Exactly what it sounds like.  I think he can _manipulate_ energy.  Thermal energy.  Kinetic energy.  Electromagnetic.  Maybe even cosmic or nuclear.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Clint said, brushing his hand through the air as though to wave aside something he found disagreeable.  “That sounds bad.”

“I think it could be.  I think it could be _very_ bad.  You need to understand.  There’s energy in everything.  On a molecular level, on an atomic level…  It’s the foundation of matter.”  Bruce closed his eyes, praying this wasn’t as serious a problem as he feared.  He was way too smart to be convinced by hope.  “He’s doing much more than just moving objects; those events are only the most noticeable of what we’ve seen.  He bent an explosion around him and that family when the bus was hurtling toward him.  He slowed the Hulk’s fist by dissipating its momentum.  He shorted out the Tower’s arc reactor.  He powered your suit, Tony.  You know the amount of energy required to do something like that.”

Tony winced and looked away.  “Shit.  You’re right.”

“It’s tied to his emotional state, just as Dan said it would be.  It’s almost like an involuntary reaction.  And I have no idea _how_ he’s doing it.  But if he survives this and somehow learns to consciously and consistently control it…”

The silence returned.  It was rife with all the things they couldn’t bear to think about.  The consequences and ramifications and implications.  Bruce thought about Ross’ attempts to capture him after he’d become the Hulk.  How the government had pursued him, hunted him for a chance to harness the Hulk as a weapon.  How Loki had manipulated him to turn him against SHIELD.  If Steve’s powers stabilized, he’d be worth even more.  More than Captain America and the world’s only super soldier.  More than Stark and all his tech and all of his genius.  More than the Hulk.

And if his powers never stabilized, the danger he posed to _everyone_ was unfathomable.

Natasha’s phone beeped, breaking the ominous quiet.  She dug in her jacket for it and walked away from them to take the call.  Clint stared morosely at Steve’s sleeping body.  The grief in his eyes was palpable.  “We have to fix this,” he said softly.  “He doesn’t deserve this.  He’s…”  Clint swallowed thickly.  “We have to fix this.”

Tony narrowed his eyes and went back to work.  “We’re going to,” he swore.  There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in his voice.  It was nice to hear that confidence return, even if Bruce didn’t share the sentiment.  “There’s an explanation for everything in some form or another.  We’ll find this one.  The serum’s combatting the damage.  That means there’s a chance.”  Bruce wasn’t so sure.

Natasha returned, sliding her phone back into her pocket.  She neared Clint and murmured something softly to him.  Then she turned to Bruce.  “There’s been a development,” she gravely announced.

“What sort of development?” Bruce asked.

She looked unsure for a moment, a mixture of shame and displeasure swirling in her eyes.  “After the incident with Emil Blonsky in Harlem, SHIELD took Samuel Sterns into custody.”

Bruce didn’t like the sound of this.  He hadn’t spoken with Sterns since he’d fought the Abomination five years ago.  He’d been in contact with Sterns off and on for most of the time he’d been on the run from Ross.  Sterns (using the codename “Mr. Blue”) had been working on a cure for Bruce’s condition.  That obviously hadn’t panned out.  “I wasn’t aware of that.”  He was starting to feel trapped once more and ignorant of some things that were obviously important.

Natasha looked at him squarely.  She was impossible to read.  “He’s not the same man he was.  He came into contact with a sample of your blood that he’d been working on and… mutated.”

Bruce didn’t know how much more this he could take.  In the last two weeks, his kind, soft-spoken colleague had turned into some sort of heartless monster and forced him to experiment on his friend.  And now the man who he’d thought to be an ally was apparently a monster as well.  _They come in all shapes and sizes._   He hadn’t thought much about Sterns over the last few years.  Their quick meeting had ended disastrously.  But Sterns reminded him of Lahey.  Messing with dangerous things.  Driven beyond the capacity for common sense.  Blinded by possibilities without regard for consequences.  Twisted.  “I wasn’t aware of that, either.”

“I was sent to arrest him.  He’s been in lockdown in the Fridge for the last couple of years.”  Natasha tipped her head slightly.  “Hill said Agent Daniels called in from the Fridge an hour ago.  Sterns requested to see ‘Mr. Green’.  He was adamant about it.”

“‘Mr. Green’?” Tony said.  “Clever.”

Bruce offered him a withering look, and Stark went back to his work.  “What does this have to do with–”

“Sterns said it was about Doctor Lahey’s experiment,” Natasha said.  A shiver tickled the small of Bruce’s back.  This felt wrong.  Seriously so.  “Sterns is in isolation.  There was no way he could have learned about what happened.  And that suggests–”

“That he already knew,” Clint finished.  “Which means he could have been involved.  This guy have any connections to AIM?”

Natasha shook her head.  “None that SHIELD is aware of.  Like I said, he’s been in lockdown for the last couple of years.  Planning something at all, let alone something this complicated, would have been damn near impossible; he has had no contact with the outside world.”  She looked evenly at Bruce again.  “This is the best lead we’ve had.”

Bruce closed his eyes and tipped his head back.  _Damn it._   “How long will it take to get to this Fridge place?”

Natasha shrugged slightly.  “By jet?  About four hours.”

 _Four hours there.  Four hours back.  And however long it takes to see what Sterns wants._ “And SHIELD won’t move him from there?”

“I doubt it,” Natasha said, “especially since as far as SHIELD is concerned this incident with the Cap isn’t happening.  It’ll be easier for us to go to him.”

There wasn’t much choice.  If Sterns knew something, _anything_ , about what Dan’s drug had done to Steve, it needed to be explored.  That had a much better chance of providing useful information than aimlessly running tests.  Still, he didn’t want to go; if Steve took a turn for the worst, the others would need him here.  _There isn’t much choice._   “Alright.  There’s enough of the sedative to last for twelve hours or so.  Keep him unconscious as much as possible.  It’s the safest course right now.”

Clint didn’t seem pleased.  He looked at Steve again, frowning at the prospect of sedating him for the foreseeable future.  But he nodded.  It was like a damn mantra.  _No choice._

Natasha quickly found the keys to the SHIELD SUV.  “I’ll go with you, Bruce.”

Bruce nodded.  “Let’s hurry.”

* * *

The Fridge was apparently one of the best kept secrets of SHIELD.  Bruce got the distinct impression as they rendezvoused with the helicarrier off the coast of New Jersey that not many of even its higher level agents knew what it was, let alone where it was.  Only Agents Hill and Romanoff accompanied him in the quinjet as it took off from the flight deck of the helicarrier.  They didn’t speak much, neither to each other nor to him, and he realized that what was happening was perhaps not by the books.  He highly doubted civilians were normally permitted near such a top-secret installation, which no doubt meant Fury had his hands in this to make it possible.  Bruce didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried.  He settled on worried.

As the quinjet cut through the early light of dawn, he did his part.  He didn’t pay attention to where they were going, didn’t glance at the flight instruments or the GPS maps or even out the windows.  Instead he focused on the pad in his hand, looking over the MRI scans and genetic results again.  He was beginning to realize that what he’d suspected before was true: there was damage occurring in Steve’s brain.  It was diffuse and not overly noticeable, but when he carefully compared the recent scans from those taken right after the experiment, he could see it.  It was more prominent in the cerebal cortex and limbic system, particularly in and around the amygdala.  It made sense; if Steve’s emotions were involved with or otherwise triggering his powers, changes in those areas should be evident.  He suspected if they did another MRI the damage would be even more noticeable, despite the efforts of the super soldier serum to contain and correct it.  He didn’t want to say as much to the others, but he didn’t think this would be a battle the serum could win.

Tony was sending Steve’s vitals to him in a continuous stream on his tablet.  For the moment, everything looked stable.  Tony was also rerunning the genetic analysis and getting JARVIS to help him better identify the sequence Dan’s drug was trying to produce.  Bruce was providing his input through text messages, trying to be helpful even if he still believed these efforts would be in vain.  At the very least it was something to keep him busy.  They’d added a few hundred more nucleotides to the sequence with relatively high confidence.  It hadn’t brought them much closer to understanding anything, and when he saw what he assumed to be the Fridge growing closer through the quinjet’s windshield, he abandoned his work.

He stood and leaned into the cockpit.  “Is that it?”

“Yeah,” Natasha answered.

Bruce was amazed and disturbed at once (which sadly seemed to be a common reaction of late).  Across the shining ocean stood a tower that glimmered like a spike of steel, silver, and glass in the sun.  It looked to be at least a hundred stories tall, its shadow looming over the pearly beach behind it as the morning light struck its sleek and smooth surfaces.  It was forbidding, huge and imposing and threatening.  The jet cut through the wisps of clouds hanging over the ocean, approaching its destination in a wide arc.  Bruce watched the Fridge grow larger and larger, hearing Natasha communicate with the agents inside the tower as she prepared to land.  The quinjet shuddered slightly as the powerful jet engines throttled back and then turned off, trading propulsion to the twin rotors in each wing.  They hovered above the landing pad at the top of the tower for a second or two before the jet set down and the rear ramp opened.

Bruce waited for Hill and Romanoff, and the three of them headed out into the morning sun.  The air was warm with summer and smelled strongly of the sea.  Bruce followed behind the two SHIELD agents as they made their way across the landing pad to the glass doors.  They walked with confidence and poise, so much so that Bruce felt even more out of place and uncertain of himself.  Natasha glanced over her shoulder at him, the wind kicking up her fiery red hair.  Her eyes were stern, perhaps imploring him to be less obviously anxious or maybe demanding that he keep quiet.  He would try to do both.

The doors were guarded by two heavily armed soldiers.  Upon seeing Hill, one of them commanded, “State your name and position for access.”

“Deputy Director Maria Hill,” Hill declared.

“Agent Natasha Romanoff,” Natasha added.

Bruce wasn’t sure if he should speak, so he didn’t.  The guards checked a panel inside the room.  “Bruce Banner is not cleared for entrance,” the same one declared.

“Director Fury has cleared him.”  At that, Hill turned a pad so that its face was visible to the guards and shoved it to the doors.  The soldiers looked over the orders for a long moment, during which Bruce had to do everything in his power not to squirm or fidget.  Apparently whatever the man read was satisfactory because he nodded, deactivated the locking mechanisms, and the doors opened.

Bruce followed Hill and Natasha across the short lobby into the elevator.  One of the guards accompanied them, and Bruce immediately realized why when he flashed an access card to the control panel of the lift.  He swept his fingers over the touch screen.  “That’ll be all, soldier,” Hill said with half a smile, and she nudged him out of the door before the elevator car smoothly began to descend. 

It didn’t seem that way, but Bruce could tell they were moving extremely quickly down through the Fridge.  Natasha turned to him, her hands clasped in front of her.  “Sterns is an unknown.  SHIELD hasn’t been able to discern the extent of what his mutation has done to him.  He’s been rather resistant to testing.  But he’s manipulative and cunning.  We consider him extremely dangerous.”

“You should,” Bruce agreed.  “He was experimenting with my blood.  He wanted to refine the process that created the Hulk.  He claimed it was for good intentions, but I don’t think so.”

“Seems to be a theme of late,” Hill muttered disdainfully.  “Doctor Banner, whatever he wants, you need to keep information about Captain Rogers quiet.  As impossible as it seems, Sterns _must_ have some connection to his co-conspirators outside the Fridge.  Fury has been pouring over records of who he’s had contact with, if information about what happened to you guys could have _possibly_ found its way here, but he hasn’t come up with anything yet.  That means if there’s a mole, he’s still here.  So no specifics.”

Bruce didn’t like the sound of this.  It reminded him too much of the last time he’d talked to Dan.  That had also ended disastrously.  He’d never know for sure what had driven Dan to suicide.  The drug he’d been testing on himself?  The guilt over what he’d done?  Bruce, who was maybe the closest thing Dan had ever had to a friend, disclaiming any part of his so-called science?  Or was it just desperation and rage that the fruits of his labor and dreams had been denied to him? 

God, he was tired of science being wielded like a weapon.

The elevator reached its destination.  Hill stepped out first.  Natasha held back a moment.  She looked at Bruce, and even though her face was as stoic as always, he knew exactly what she was about to say.  “There are a lot of… dangerous things down here.  Just keep that in the back of your head, okay?”

 _Dangerous things.  Am I the most dangerous of them all?_   Had things gone differently, he could have ended up another specimen locked away in SHIELD’s vaults.  He tried not to think about that as they walked the beige corridors, passing offices and lab rooms and detention blocks.  It was impossible to discern what many of the rooms contained from the outside as they were locked by thick, steel doors and unlabeled.  It was to one of these rooms that Hill and Natasha led him.  The Deputy Director nodded to the guards stationed outside, and they flashed their badges to the door panel before the biometric scanner verified their identities.  Locks that sounded heavy and unbreakable disengaged from the door, and one of the guards opened it.

Samuel Sterns sat at a gray table.  He wore a tan jumpsuit, obviously some sort of prison attire, and his hands were cuffed before him.  Part of him looked as Bruce remembered: small and wild in the eyes and just a tad unhinged.  A long, unimposing face with a hooked nose and small chin.  Small brown eyes that were too quick to think and even quicker to judge.  They were brighter now.  And the distended mass off the side of Sterns’ head was downright disturbing.  It was flesh and bone (at least, it looked like it was), but it appeared as though his brain was morphing and pulsing beneath it.  A good deal of his short brown hair was missing.  His skin had a slightly green tinge to it, a hue that spoke of sickness.  When those brown eyes fell to Bruce, a hideous smile stretched across his face.  “Mr. Green,” Sterns said.  “How nice to see you again.”

The door closed behind Bruce as he and the two SHIELD agents walked closer to Sterns.  Bruce pulled his eyes off the disgusting growth on Stern’s head.  “Nice to see you, too,” Bruce calmly answered.

“And Agents Hill and Romanoff,” Sterns said, flicking that encompassing gaze to the two women.  He didn’t seem at all surprised by their presence.  “How nice of Director Fury to send me some eye candy.  It gets a little dry in here, if you know what I mean.”

Neither of the SHIELD agents so much as blinked at that.  Hill stepped closer, folding her arms across her breasts.  “You wanted to see Doctor Banner,” she said.  “Let’s get this over with.”

Sterns turned his gaze back to Bruce.  It was… _unsettling_.  There was such depth to his eyes, depth that Bruce couldn’t recall from the last time he’d seen Sterns.  Sterns seemed to read his mind.  “Like my new look, Bruce?”  He shrugged a little.  “Takes a little getting used to, I admit.  It’s not as awe-inspiring as yours.  Apparently it doesn’t wear off, either.”

“What do you want?” Bruce asked.

Sterns folded his hands together.  “Nothing much, as it turns out,” he said.  “Mostly I just wanted to know how you were doing.  If you’re still in denial.”  Sterns’ face tightened a bit, and he winced ever so slightly.  “If you’re still trying to tell yourself that it was wrong.”

He wasn’t sure to what Sterns was referring.  “We’re not here to talk about me,” Bruce coldly reminded.  He wasn’t about to be goaded again.  “You knew what Dan Lahey was up to.  How?”

Sterns pursed his lips slightly.  The mass on his head visibly shifted.  It was revolting and frightening and it took a good deal of Bruce’s will to get his eyes back on the other’s man face instead of his grotesquely misshapen head.  “Well, I’ll tell you.  I knew because I had a small hand in setting it up.”

That confirmed their suspicions but did _nothing_ to explain the details.  “You’ve been in isolation for months, Sterns,” Natasha said stiffly.  “How did you get in contact with AIM?  Who’s moving information in and out of here for you?”

“People here and there,” Sterns answered.  “I’d name them, but I don’t think we have all day.”  Hill’s face loosened just a bit in alarm, and she shared a tiny, unnerved look with Natasha.  “You know, given the right set of circumstances, the right chain of events occurring at the exact right time, things become disturbingly predictable.  Like a pathetic man desperate to prove himself.  I’ve been that man, you know.  So have you.”

“Don’t think you know me,” Bruce coldly warned.  “You don’t.”

“I know if you stick a pyromaniac in a room full of fuel and matches eventually you’re going to get a really awesome explosion.”

“So you gave Lahey the fuel and matches,” Hill surmised.  “Why?  How?”

“Let’s just say my reach has significantly improved of late,” Sterns explained.  He rubbed his finger over the smooth surface of the table.  “You find all sorts of willing accomplices open to persuasion.  Miss Hansen, for instance.  Mr. Killian.  Others in AIM.  People at NIH.  You know what they all had in common?”

“They were crazy,” Bruce lowly said.

“Yes,” Sterns agreed simply, “and they wanted to use science to gain power.  Power is everything.”

Bruce nodded toward the growth on Sterns’ head.  “You think that’s power?”

“Oh, I don’t think anything anymore,” Sterns answered.  “I _know_ things.  I know _everything_.  I see things play out before my eyes minutes and hours and days and weeks before they actually do it.  An infinite collection of coincidences and happenstances, all so malleable if you can just get your fingers in there…  Like pawns on a chessboard.”

“Cliché,” Bruce said.  “And I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re God?”

“You said it.”

“How did you know what Lahey’s experiment would do?”

“You’re not the only expert on Gamma radiation out there, Bruce.  Before I took up my current residence here in prison, he and I had some contact.  He sent me some data, and I tried to help him along.  I figured he needed more than just my advice or even your advice.  He needed the right situation.  I realized after our own fateful meeting that I could create that for him.”

“The right situation,” Bruce repeated.  “You mean the right test subject.”

“Come on,” Sterns said.  “You know how important it is to have the best possible data.  When you’re trying to create a man who’s better than what he was, more powerful than _anyone_ can fathom, you gotta start with the greatest chance of success that you have.  Our dear Doctor Erskine taught us that.  He was a true pioneer in human experimentation.”

That hurt more than it should have.  “Cut the crap,” Hill warned.  She glared icily at Sterns.  “We know you somehow figured out Captain Rogers was being sent to investigate Lahey.”

“Somehow figured out?  My dear Agent Hill, _I’m_ the one who sent him there.”  Bruce’s heart stopped for a painful second.  “Like I said, pawns on a chessboard.  Drop the bread crumbs here and there so SHIELD gets suspicious.  A coincidental money trail, the elaboration of someone who wants to be discovered.  Contact with some disreputables in the Balkans, brawn to provide protection for the brains.  Lahey’s seemingly random email to you, Bruce, after years of silence.  Not random at all.  And you Avengers are all so self-righteous.  Capturing both you and Rogers would have been impossible, but luring you into a trap was all too easy.  And playing you and your care for each other and your friends was the easiest part of all.  You never had any choice.  I calculated the seemingly infinite probabilities of each conceivable outcome and adjusted the events until the one I wanted occurred exactly as I wanted it to.  And now it has.  Marvelous what he can do, isn’t it?  More powerful than even you.”

“You son of a bitch,” Bruce snarled.  “A man’s suffering because of you.  He could die.”

Sterns smiled smugly.  “He won’t.  How’s the battle between Erskine’s serum and Lahey’s serum going, by the way?  Tables turned for the bad guys yet?”  Bruce could hardly believe what he was hearing.  There was simply _no way_ Sterns could know _any of this._   The data was only hours old, and only the Avengers were aware of it.  Unless SHIELD was full of more leaks than a rusted out ship.  But Bruce didn’t think so.  There was something else going on here.  Something far more dangerous and sinister than SHIELD being compromised with double agents.  Even worse than a desperate scientist willing to do anything and hurt anyone to make his experiment succeed.

Sterns’ grin was revolting.  “Here’s the thing I like best about Lahey’s little drug.  It really gets down into a man’s mind.  Rips him wide open until he bleeds all of his darkest memories and nightmares out of him.  All that really awful stuff that drives people into doing truly awful things.  Ambitions and insecurities and hatred.  You know what I’m talking about.”  Bruce stiffened.  “What kind of demons does Captain America have?  Huh?”

Natasha was across the table in a flash of black and red.  Her hand was around Sterns’ throat, squeezing hard enough to restrict his airway and cause him pain but not enough to kill him.  “How do we fix it?” she demanded, her face looming over his.  Bruce looked nervously at Hill, but her cold glare was settled firmly on Sterns as Black Widow choked him.  She didn’t move at all.  “How do we save him?”

“Save him?” Sterns gasped with half a laugh.  “This isn’t going to be about saving him.  This isn’t even going to about stopping him.”  He gurgled as Natasha squeezed tighter.  “It’s going to be about controlling him.”

“How?” Hill demanded.  Sterns fought for breath, reddening as he stared at Natasha.  Natasha let him suffer a moment more, her expression a wrathful glower.  But then her face unexpectedly softened.  Her eyes widened into something of a vacant glaze, and she released him. 

For a moment, no one moved.  Curious and more than a little concerned, Bruce glanced between Romanoff and Sterns.  The scientist panted, trying to catch his wind.  Eventually he wiped the spittle from the corner of his mouth.  “You know,” he began nonchalantly, as though he hadn’t nearly been strangled to death mere seconds before, “when things get pulled out of the shadows, it’s really hard to put them back.  So much anger and fear.  So much pain.  I know yours is right near the surface, Bruce.  Like a vein throbbing just beneath the skin.  Nick it, and out it comes in a flood.  But Captain America…”  He shook his head.  “He’s different.  He always has been.  Better than all of us.  Perfect when you really think about it.  He’s got everything so under control.  Nothing bothers him.  Nothing hurts him.  He takes everything life throws at him and keeps going.  Makes you wonder how anyone could be that strong, that stable, doesn’t it?”  Sterns pursed his lips again and shrugged a little, the handcuffs rattling against the table.  “Of course, we both know it really can’t be that way.  Everyone has a breaking point, even him.  Eventually even he’ll do anything to make the pain stop.”  That was a threat.  It was dripping in certainty, in cruelty.  Sterns smiled a taunting smile.  “That much good…  It’s unsustainable.”

Bruce’s eyes widened.  Ice drove into his heart, ice that quickly melted when his anger rose within him.  Hill was coming closer, prepared to question or intimidate or interrogate him further, but there was no point.  “We need to go,” he said to the SHIELD agents.  They looked at each other and then at him in anger and frustration.  He wasn’t about to be dissuaded.

Sterns’ face fell in mock disappointment.  “So soon?  We were just getting started.”  He smiled again.  He was so proud of himself.  “But I suppose you’re right.  It’s not smart to leave Captain Rogers alone.  Never know what might happen.”

 _Oh, God._   “Now.  Let’s go.”

“Hold on–”

Bruce grabbed Natasha’s arm, his eyes glowing green.  “Now!”

The door slammed shut and they were out in the hall.  “What the hell, Banner?  He knows _everything!_   Who he’s working with.  Why.  We need to get back in there and get him to talk!” Natasha yelled.

“It’s too late!  We need to go.  We need to get back to the others!” Bruce shouted as he began running back down the hall toward the elevator.

“Bruce, wait!  What is it?”

He whirled sharply on them, his eyes blazing and terror tightly clenching his gut.  “Don’t you get it?” he snapped.  Both of them recoiled slightly.  “I don’t know how he did it, if he can see the future or what, but he planned this whole thing from the start!  Dan getting that grant from NIH.  Dan contacting me.  SHIELD sending Steve in.  Tony getting shot and Dan forcing me to cooperate.  Sterns planned everything so that Dan’s experiment would succeed!  This was never about anything other than power!”

“Power?”  Hill shook her head.  “He’s stuck in a cell out here in the middle of nowhere!  What can he do?”

 _Everything._   Bruce could barely stand to breathe.  “This was a trap,” he said.  “A trap to get me away.”  _God._ “A trap to divide us.  Expose us.”  _How could he know?  How?  How does he know so much?_

_How could I have been so stupid?_

“What?  What’s happening?” Natasha gasped.

There was no choice.  Nothing they could do.  Nothing left but panic.  “AIM is going to kidnap Steve,” Bruce softly said, “and we’re not there to stop it.”


	11. Chapter 11

Things seemed to be okay.  Rogers was sleeping, really sleeping, and he had been for the last few hours.  Barton was dozing on the floor beside his bed, having grabbed another pillow from the supply closet maybe an hour ago when he’d finally convinced himself that Steve was alright for the time being.  Tony was keeping an eye on the both of them, on Steve’s thankfully steady vital signs, on Clint to make sure Steve stayed calmly unconscious and was therefore not a threat.  He was pretty damn tired.  This lab had a decently sized kitchen that was stocked with non-perishables, coffee included, and he’d been living off the stuff since Bruce and Romanoff had left.  He preferred energy drinks to this cheap swill SHIELD had purchased (and he preferred to not be sitting in complete and utter silence), but there wasn’t much to be done for it.  Steve was peaceful (maybe for the first time in _weeks_ ) and Clint deserved to rest.

So he sat at the console outside the cage, drinking the disgusting coffee, jittering, trying to keep himself awake.  Normally he could go for quite some time without sleep; it was perhaps Pepper’s least favorite of his many awesome attributes (she called it insomnia but he preferred to think of it as immunity to exhaustion).  He got some of his best ideas when he was high on sugar and caffeine and practically punch-drunk with fatigue.  But this stuff on which he was working was all fairly beyond him.  He knew some things about biochemical engineering (okay, more than most.  Enough to have repaired Extremis to save Pepper), but this required a level of expertise and understanding that he didn’t possess.  And Bruce had gone silent in their texting about half an hour ago, so without his guidance Tony was at a bit of a loss.  He had spent some time installing JARVIS onto the computer system in the lab.  SHIELD’s security protocols were fairly substantial, but these were outdated compared to the ones he’d hacked on helicarrier a year and a half ago so he defeated them without much effort.  Still, the technology here was archaic compared to what he had all around the Tower, and actually having to type with a keyboard was trying his patience.

And it was so damn quiet.  Every creak and moan this place made was ridiculously loud.  Tony knew he was getting a little jumpy, but the slightest noise startled him, and he found himself continuously looking over his shoulder and peering into the shadows.  He wasn’t too keen on being left to man the fort, so to speak, and having to do it essentially alone.  This place was too big but still so claustrophobic and sort of scary when he was the only one awake in it.

“Your analysis has finished, sir,” JARVIS announced, drawing Tony’s wayward attention.

“Bravo,” Tony muttered.  He blinked a few times to clear his vision and squinted at the obnoxiously bright screens in front of him.

“If you are bothered by the dark, you should turn on some lights,” JARVIS calmly reminded him.  The knowing tone in the AI’s voice was grating to say the least.

“And risk waking Rogers?  Don’t think so.”

“The bioscanners indicate Captain Rogers is in deep REM sleep.  I doubt increasing the illumination would disturb him.”

Tony wasn’t about to take the chance.  By whatever grace of good luck, Steve was well and truly out.  They hadn’t even had to dose him again on Bruce’s wonder drug (and Tony would like to keep it that way because he frankly didn’t know how he and Clint would manage that if Steve put up a fight).  “I’m fine,” he muttered as he started looking over the analysis.  He’d rerun some of Bruce’s genetic tests on the rest of the sample of cerebral-spinal fluid they’d gathered from Steve earlier.  He would have preferred to take a new sample, but that was frankly out of the question.  “When did we do that lumbar puncture?  A few hours ago?”

“More like seven hours ago,” JARVIS corrected.

“Huh.”  This wasn’t what Tony had expected to see.  “Is it just me, or is he getting better?”

That was certainly what it seemed like.  “If you define ‘getting better’ as a reduced transformation of his DNA, then yes, I would have to agree.  According to these results, the mutation rate has dropped significantly.  Before nearly 77% of the sample showed cells containing some portion of the new DNA sequence.  That has decreased to below 50%.”

“49.3%,” Tony mused.  “What the hell?”

“In addition, those cells with the new sequence are not expressing it as fully as they were before.  I am detecting fewer completed chains.  It would follow that RNA and proteins resulting from the sequence are likely decreasing in frequency as well.”

Tony couldn’t believe this.  “It has to be the super soldier serum,” he murmured, rubbing his fingers over his goatee before bracing his fist against his chin in thought.

“Perhaps.  Or Doctor Lahey’s drug is not stable.  Without knowing more about how the serum might be attacking the drug, there is no way to be certain.”  If this sample matched what was going on in Steve’s body right now, if the serum was fighting back, then that could explain why he had been so calm for the last few hours.  Maybe he was sleeping a healing sleep.  That thought was too alluring to ignore, and he was getting ahead of himself.  He swore JARVIS could read his mind sometimes.  The AI was quick to call him out on his premature conclusions (and the hope that was immediately and inevitably stemming from them).  “Far be it for me to rain on your parade, but I am obligated to inform you that this is likely a statistical outlier.  We require a significantly larger number of samples over a sufficiently long time period to prove with reasonable confidence that this reduction is outside the normal fluctuations within the distribution.  Also, if, as Doctor Banner has hypothesized, the super solder serum is ‘at war’ with Doctor Lahey’s drug, winning a battle or two does not necessarily indicate long-term victory.”

“No,” Tony tightly responded, “but it’s something.  It means there’s a chance, like I said before.  It means he’s fighting.”  JARVIS paused for a second, likely trying to determine how to let Tony down gently.  Tony didn’t care.  “We gotta find a way to boost the serum.  Kick in the butt and get it going.  Fire it up.  Rally the troops, so to speak, because this says to me the serum can _beat_ this in the end.  It can protect him, get this poisonous shit out of his head.  It can write Steve’s DNA back to way it was and turn him back into the humorless asshat we all know and love.  Crazy is definitely not a good look on him.”  He felt bad saying that.  Inexplicably guilty.  But he went on.  He was babbling.  He tended to do that when he was tired (and when he was excited, and right now he was both).  His mind was racing, blasting through the fog of exhaustion.  He brought up his chat window with Bruce.  “We need a catalyst,” he said as he typed.  “Something to move this along.”

“Sir, need I remind you that throwing more fuel on a fire typically creates the opposite effect of what you are looking to achieve?  Furthermore, this is not the first time Captain Rogers’ has seemingly gotten better.  He himself said that when he was out with Miss Potts yesterday, his pain was much improved.  It was not until the telekinesis began to manifest itself that his situation so rapidly degraded.  That was the proverbial calm before the storm.  There is no reason to think this is anything different.”

“God, you’re as much of a pisser as Banner.  Were you always this pessimistic or has he been rubbing off on you?” Tony snapped.  His patience was wearing extremely thin.  It wasn’t just that he couldn’t accept there might be something beyond their (beyond _his_ ) capability of fixing.  It wasn’t just that, although that was certainly part of it.  In some twisted sense, the super soldier serum was part of his father’s legacy.  Howard Stark had been the first to bombard Steve Rogers with radiation to spurn an amazing chemical process in his body.  Tony refused to believe that the serum his father had helped to create and the transformation he’d helped to achieve during Project: Rebirth were beyond repair.  Tony refused to believe _anything_ designed and crafted and built by Stark Industries was beyond repair.  He didn’t know how he felt about his father some (well, _most_ ) of the time, but he was damn sure the man had been a genius.  He wouldn’t have created something that had flaws or could be beat.  And Tony was Howard Stark’s son, and Howard Stark had been Captain America’s ally.  Steve’s friend.  Somehow that was starting to mean a lot more to him now than it ever had before.

This wasn’t goddamn fair.  Granted he and Rogers didn’t get along, but this whole thing had been a raw deal from the get-go.  No matter the animosity between them, Tony didn’t want to see Steve hurt.  He didn’t want to see Steve becoming some sort of victim, suffering with pain that couldn’t be controlled and nightmares that drove him to puke his guts out.  And he definitely _did not want to see_ Captain America turned into some sort of madman, lashing out mindlessly like a monster with every bit of his strength and resilience twisted against him and all of his valor and compassion burned away by the poison in his body.  The world would be truly screwed, completely off-kilter and tilted and distorted beyond recognition, the day Captain America was made into a weapon against the people he’d sworn to protect.

There was no way to know for sure that that was where this was headed, but Tony was afraid.  He was terrified, more so of that than even of Steve dying.  He couldn’t let that happen, and he couldn’t let Steve die, not if he could stop it.  And he was getting damn tired of being told it was inevitable.  Maybe it was.  Maybe there was nothing they could do (he’d told Bruce that, after all, that this wasn’t their fault because there’d been no way to stop it), but he didn’t really believe that.  Tony was stubborn, and he wasn’t going to submit.

JARVIS had been quiet for a moment.  “I do not think Doctor Banner is pessimistic,” the AI finally declared in a soft, almost tender tone.  “He simply knows the limits of science.  And he more than anyone is familiar with the pain of being turned into something you are not against your will.”  Tony winced at that, and the heat of his anger and exhilaration faded as quickly as it had come.  He looked into the chamber, watching Steve’s chest rise and fall slowly and evenly as he slept.  His face was lax and serene, still so pale and there was dried blood that Natasha had missed earlier caked behind his ear.  He couldn’t help but think of that face glowering at him, of those bright blue eyes filled with rage and fear and pain and a need to _hurt_ someone else.  A hand clenched around his throat.  Iron Man hovering before Pepper, prepared to fire.  That twist of a smile on Steve’s lips.  There was a monster inside of Captain America being built of dark things and the chemicals killing his soul and the fire scorching his mind, and the thought of that getting free…  “But if you have an idea for an appropriate catalyst that can boost the effects of the super soldier serum without killing him, then of course I am willing to hear it.”

He didn’t.  But he didn’t get much of a chance to think about it.  “What was that?”

“What was what, sir?”

The vibration he’d felt a second before came again.  It was subtle, a low, rumble against his feet where they were planted on the concrete floor.  It rattled up the stool upon which he was sitting, uncomfortably tickling his pelvis and abdomen.  He winced.  It didn’t last more than a second.  He looked around but there were only the same shadows draped over the same desks and workstations and rooms and hallways.  He was as alone as he had been the entire time he’d been out there.  Tony’s heart started to pound as he strained his senses and watched and listened, but there was nothing.  No movement.  No sound.  Nothing different.  The tiny hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and a cold sweat broke out across his skin.  He was pretty goddamn sure he hadn’t imagined it.  He looked back at Steve and Clint, but they were both still sleeping.  “J, you have access to the security feeds?”

“Not yet.  I am having difficulty bypassing SHIELD protocols,” the AI admitted.

The room rattled again.  This time he was positively certain it was real.  And it lasted longer, long enough that he could hear the light fixtures rattle overhead.  He swallowed his thundering heart back into his chest.  “Get the lights on.”  Bright, glaring illumination flooded through the room.  The sudden change made Tony wince as his headache ramped up.  He whirled around, looking frantically, but there was still nothing.  Once more the huge lab room grumbled, the floor vibrating under his feet.  This time it was enough to disturb Clint, and the archer groaned and rolled to his side.  One of the tablet computers rattled off the desk and hit the floor and shattered.  “Oh, shit,” he whispered.  “Is this Rogers?”

“I do not believe so.  He is still asleep.”

“Is he dreaming?”

“Sir, your connection to Doctor Banner.”

Tony whirled and brought the text message up on his screen.  _“AIM is coming,”_ it said.  _“Get Steve out of there.”_

 _Oh, hell._   “JARVIS, get the suit ready!”  Tony didn’t wait for a response.  He grabbed Bruce’s sedative and a syringe and ran around the console.  He burst through the clean room, impatiently waiting for the airlocks to seal behind him, and staggered into the cage.  “Barton!  Clint!  Get up!”

That snapped Clint to awareness.  He jumped to his feet, unsteady at first with a grimace tight upon his face.  He was too well-trained as a spy, a soldier, and a killer to be fazed for more than a second, though.  “What?  What’s wrong?”

“AIM’s coming,” Tony answered.  He clumsily loaded the syringe with the sedative.  “We have to get Steve out of here.  Now.”

Clint’s eyes widened.  “How the hell did they find us?  No one knows we’re here!”

“Ask your boss,” Tony sharply answered.

“Banner and Romanoff?”

“Not back yet.”

“Shit.”  Clint looked around when that awful rattled resounded again.  He recognized what it was immediately.  He turned his eyes to the ceiling.  “They’re cutting through the doors upstairs.”

Tony was shocked he’d been too dumb to figure that out.  The doors were built into the side of a mountain, fairly well-hidden.  There was a lobby beyond them complete with a security checkpoint and a few offices and hallways, but the elevator down was the only thing that truly mattered.  He wasn’t sure how deep underground they were (at least a hundred feet, if not more).  “Is there only the one way out of here?”

Clint was tense and frustrated, though he was doing his best not to show it.  “I don’t know.  I haven’t been here before.”

“Well, that’s a pretty big problem!  We can’t go up if they’re coming down!”  Clint’s expression tightened in anger.  He reached for his sidearm and made certain it was loaded.  “JARVIS!” Tony yelled.  “Tell me there’s another way up!”

“I have no access to–”

The power went out.  They were left reeling in utter pitch blackness for what felt to be an eternity of rushed breaths and pounding hearts and terror.  Then the emergency lights switched on, flooding the lab with red.  The computers were all dark.  And without the computers, they had no access to JARVIS.

Clint was across the room in a breath, reaching for the door to the clean room.  It wouldn’t budge.  “Damn it,” he breathed, pulling harder though they both knew it was useless.  Without power, the cage had gone automatically into lockdown.  It was probably a failsafe mechanism to keep whatever monsters and hazards the lab was meant to store in containment.  Now it had effectively trapped them.

This was very bad.

Clint growled in irritation and drew his gun.  He fired two shots into the glass observation window between them and the lab outside, but the bullets smashed into the surface uselessly.  “Pretty sure Hulk-proof implies bulletproof,” Tony said tightly.

“Was worth a shot,” Clint answered just as tightly.  “No Iron Man?”

“Out there.”  Tony tipped his head to the scarcely illumination lab beyond.

“Fantastic.”  Clint’s quick eyes scanned around them, looking for some other escape point, but there were none.  There were no vents, no seams in the ceiling or between the ceiling and the wall, nothing along the floor.  There was no way out.  Of course there wouldn’t be.  He turned to Tony.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“Keeping him under,” Tony replied as he fumbled with the syringe.  He knelt by Steve’s side and tapped the air from the needle before pulling the blanket back from the soldier’s upper body.

“Don’t,” Clint warned.  “We might need him.”

“We can’t control him!”

“He’s the only weapon we’ve got.”  To hear Clint talk about his friend like made Tony’s heart thunder in panic.  The SHIELD agent was right.  All they had inside this cage was one handgun and Steve and a silent prayer that he’d be conscious and aware enough to direct his powers toward their attackers and not them.  He set the needle aside and hoped they weren’t making a costly mistake.  Injecting Steve later when he was awake would be difficult.

In the quiet seconds that followed, Tony could hear distant clangs and bangs and thuds.  “They’re coming down the elevator shaft,” Clint quietly said.

Tony watched Clint as he listened.  He had to defer to Clint’s knowledge here; the man was a master assassin, a black ops soldier, an expert marksman whose senses were honed by years of practice and talent, and therefore he was far better equipped to contend with a situation like this than Tony was.  Tony felt blind and completely naked without his tech.  “How many?” he asked softly.  He didn’t know why they were whispering, but it suddenly felt like they were hiding.

“I’m not sure.  A lot.”  Tony gritted his teeth.  The air recyclers had gone down with the power, and the room was quickly becoming hot and stuffy.  His heart pounding so sharply against his skull wasn’t helping matters.  “We need to wake him,” Clint said, looking down at Steve who was still sleeping through all of this.

Tony had no idea if that was wise or just plain lunacy.  He didn’t even know if they _could_ wake Steve, given they had no idea how deeply asleep he was.  Bruce’s sedative should be wearing off soon, he thought, and they had to do it eventually.  And there was no way to tell how useful Steve would be to them, considering the last time he’d been awake he’d been too weak and sick to do much else other than throw up and pass out.  Still it seemed like a good idea to try now.  At least this way they had an opportunity to talk some sense into him, keep him calm and grounded enough to try and focus his mind before all hell broke loose.  There wasn’t much point in debating it, at any rate.  As soon as their attackers got through the elevator doors on the other side of the lab, their options to avoid being captured or killed would rapidly dwindle to nothing.

Clint pulled the blanket away entirely.  Tony leaned over Steve’s upper body and rolled him onto his back.  He was completely limp, boneless almost, and it was a far cry from the tension that had dominated his form for hours before.  That didn’t bode well for their chances of rousing him.  “Steve,” Tony called.  He shook the soldier slightly, but that did nothing.  “Cap.  Rogers!  Wake up!”  As hard as he could he knuckled Rogers’ sternum, jabbing his fingers painfully into the wall of smooth skin and solid muscle, but he still got nowhere.  He patted his cheek, softly at first but then more insistently and with greater force.  Steve slumbered on.

A few loud bangs echoed through the silent lab.  “They’re at the doors,” Clint hissed.  “Hurry!”

“I’m trying, damn it!”  Frustrated and panicking more by the second, Tony abandoned all pretenses of being gentle or quiet about this.  “Steve!  Come on!  Wake up now!  Right now!  _Wake up!_ ”  He slapped Steve across the face.  Hard.

That did it, but not in a good way.  Steve’s eyes snapped open and his hand caught Tony’s.  Tony cried out in pain as Steve’s fingers, as strong and as hard as steel, closed around his wrist and squeezed.  He could feel his bones grinding together.  “Steve!  No!” Clint shouted, and he grabbed Steve’s hand and pulled him back.  “Let him go!”

It didn’t seem like Steve would.  His eyes glowed with that madness again – and Tony realized in a split second of heart-shattering regret that hitting him had been a monumentally _stupid_ idea – before it faded back into a confused, hurt fog.  Steve released him, and that shaking immediately returned to his body.  “Sorry,” he whispered.  His face crumpled into a wince.  All the energy seemed to depart him with one shuddering sigh, and he closed his eyes again.

“No,” Clint said quickly.  “No.  Stay awake.  Look at me.  We’re in trouble.”

“Let me sleep,” he moaned.  “Hurts.”

“No!” Tony snapped.  “Didn’t you hear Clint?  We’re in trouble!  There are men coming to take you!”  Those taut words were enough to get through to him.  He recoiled from them, moving away from Clint’s hold on his arm, and sat up more fully.  He groaned through his teeth and leaned into the wall. 

Clint refused to be pushed aside, setting his hands on Steve’s shoulders and pulling him back.  Steve was shaking them both he was trembling so badly.  He was frightened.  The archer took his friend’s face into his hands and stared into his feverishly glowing eyes.  “Listen,” he said softly, “we’re not going to let that happen.  I promise you.  But you need to help us.”  Another loud bang reverberated through the lab.  Steve jerked in Clint’s hold, but Clint wouldn’t let him go.  “We need your help.  We need you to fight.  And we need you to keep yourself grounded, okay?  Tony and I are here with you.  You need to remember that.  You could hurt us if you don’t.”

Steve paled even more.  He managed a small nod.  “Okay.”

“Okay,” Clint said.  He gave Steve an encouraging smile.  Steve didn’t seem all that encouraged.  Tony wasn’t.  He didn’t know if Steve’s pain was causing his emotional turmoil and that was causing the telekinesis or if the telekinesis was creating the pain and furthering the emotional turmoil.  But he sure as hell knew a vicious cycle when he saw one.  It would be damn near impossible to do one thing without escalating the other without feeding back on the first, and so on and so forth until Steve was too powerful to stop and trapped in hysteria and beyond reason and incredibly dangerous again.

Barton glanced to him as he helped Steve up to his feet.  “You can remote pilot your suit, right?”  He slung his arm around Rogers’ waist, steadying him.

“Yeah,” Tony answered, “but it’s already taken some damage, and I can’t take out so many targets without JARVIS’ help, which I don’t have.”

“You don’t need to.  When they come through the clean room, we’ll trap them.  If they shoot at us, you need to stop them, Steve.  Hold them back.  Can you do that?”  Steve didn’t answer.  The glow of his eyes seemed maniacal in the dim, ruddy light.  Clint shook him a little.  “Steve, focus.  Can you do that?”

The soldier swallowed thickly.  “Yeah.  I can try.”

“Tony, bring Iron Man around the back and blast them.  Hopefully we can take some of them out, at least enough to get the hell of out here and back outside.”  Clint leaned Steve against the wall.  He pulled a sheathed knife from his combat vest and handed it to Tony.  He smirked just a little.  “You break it, you buy it.”

“Funny.”

The doors exploded open on the other side of the lab.  Clint ducked, pulling Steve down with him.  Tony followed, dropping to a crouch and slinking into the shadows and tucking the knife into his belt.  He pressed himself close to Steve’s side.  He felt every tremor that rocked the large frame beside him.  Steve was hunched over, gasping noisily and heavily in the absolute silence while Clint and Tony hardly dared to breathe at all.  “Easy,” Clint whispered.  The archer was peering through the observation window out through the desks and workbenches.  Tony couldn’t see as well from his vantage.  A second later Clint looked back.  He made a quick gesture with his hands, and Steve was with it enough to nod.  Tony couldn’t read SHIELD super spy charades, so he just waited and prayed Hawkeye knew what he was doing.

The silence was torturous.  It was hard to keep still, hard when the sound of boots thudding softly against the floor was louder than a stampede, hard when seconds were bleeding away and every inclination in his heart screamed _run_ and he had to ignore it.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw shadows sneaking outside, moving around the console to the left and approaching the hallway that led to the clean room.  “Easy,” Clint reminded again.  His voice was a murmur in Steve’s ear.  Tony watched Clint take Rogers’ hand and squeeze tight.  “You can do this.  They’re coming now.”

The attackers weren’t going to be able to get the clean room open without reinstating power.  It was an endless eternity of tension while Steve shivered and Clint stayed cool and collected and Tony fought not to fidget.  Finally the lights flooded back on, bright and awful.  Steve groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, nearly collapsing between them as he turned a queasy shade of green.  “No,” Clint calmly ordered, holding onto him tighter as he wavered.  The doors unlocked and the clean room opened.

The men charged inside.  Clint pointed his gun at them, his one handgun against the slew of assault rifles targeting them.  “Drop it!” snapped the first black-clad soldier.  “Hands on your head!  Step away from him!”

“Never,” Clint seethed.  “Get out of here!”

The soldier wasted not another word, pulling the trigger on his gun.  The shot careened toward Clint, aimed at his chest.

It never hit.

Steve held his hand up and the bullet just _stopped._ It hung in the air, spiraling slowly, and everybody watched it.  Then the soldiers realized what they were up against and let loose, firing rapidly.  Tony watched in complete awe as Steve rose smoothly to his feet like he hadn’t been sick and weak and dying on them hours before and raised his other hand and brought every single bullet to a sudden and stunning halt.  Steve narrowed his eyes and with a blink the array of bullets turned back and drove themselves into the legs and arms of their attackers, avoiding the bulletproof vests and disabling them.

Clint wasn’t as careful.  He delivered two fast head shots.  “Now, Tony!”

Tony snapped out of his shock and spun toward the observation window, holding his own hands out.  He wrenched them back toward him, the sharp action triggering the sensors in the implants in his arms.  Iron Man’s blue eyes winked to life from the corner of the lab where he’d left the armor.  The repulsors in the boots ignited and the armor flew toward them.  Faster than the men could prevent the palm repulsors powered up and fired.  Tony shot blindly, ducking as Steve continued to hold his hands out and deflect the gunfire coming at them.  The bullets bent in their trajectory around the Avengers, slamming into the ceiling and floor and wall and the window.  Tony was terrified he’d be hit (he really had _no interest_ in getting shot again), but he wasn’t.  And when it stopped, bodies lay in strewn through the entrance to the cage and out into the clean room and corridor.

“Holy shit,” Tony breathed.

Steve slumped down to his knees.  He had one hand wrapped around his chest, the other weakly holding himself up to keep his face from hitting the floor.  He coughed and blood dripped from his nose.  Tony felt agonized and guilty just watching for a second, but that was all he could spare.  “Come on!”  He looped an around Steve’s middle and tried to lift him, but the guy weighed a ton.  “Barton!  Come on!”

Clint turned.  He grabbed one of the discarded rifles before rushing back to Steve.  He took Steve’s other arm and slung it over his shoulder.  “One.  Two.  Three!”  They stood, pulling Steve up with him.  Steve crumpled.  “No!  You have to walk.  We need to get you out of here.”

“Can’t.  Gonna be sick,” Steve mumbled.  It was almost impossible to understand him he was slurring so badly.

“No, you’re not.”  Clint was steadfast.  He pulled Steve back to his feet.  “Let’s go.  Stark!”

 Tony knew what Clint wanted.  With a flick of his wrist he summoned Iron Man to him.  The armor fluidly came apart during the brief flight and encased his body.  The second he felt the comforting strength and protection against him, he took almost all of Steve’s weight from Clint.  The three of them staggered and pushed their way through the clean room.  “JARVIS, get me through to SHIELD.”

“Communications are being prohibited, sir,” JARVIS answered.  “There is some sort of interference I cannot penetrate.  I am attempting to work around it.”  The HUD immediately flooded with warnings, with the infrared signals of more approaching enemies.  Dozens more.

“We’re on our own,” Tony said to Clint.  “And there are a lot of guys coming.  We have to get out of here.”

“JARVIS know of any other way?” Clint asked.

Tony watched the diagrams quickly display on his screen.  The range of the scans was limited, but he could see enough to realize they were as screwed as he’d thought they were.  “No.  We have to go up the elevator.”

Clint’s face was grim.  He brought up the rifle as they stepped over the bodies all over the floor.  They walked down the short hall, Tony half supporting, half dragging Steve along with him.  They made it out into the central lab area only to be greeted by way too many AIM soldiers to possibly overcome.  They were the Avengers, and they’d faced insurmountable odds before.  But not with their captain simultaneously a huge disadvantage and an asset of potentially limitless power.  Tony had no idea what their chances were.  He didn’t feel at all confident.

The rows of black-clad soldiers all stared at them, their guns aimed at their small group.  Clint had his rifle pointed at them as well, but it was laughable how severely outnumbered they were.  “I don’t know how you think this is gonna end,” Barton lowly said, “but it’s _not_ ending with you taking Captain America.”

Behind the soldiers a woman came forward.  She had jet black hair, so glossy that it shone in the light, and blue eyes that were sharp, cold, and calculating.  Her face was very white, as pale as milk, and striking against the dark locks framing it.  Her features were fierce.  She was beautiful but dangerous.  Tony didn’t recognize her.  “Captain America is the property of Advanced Idea Mechanics,” she smugly said.  Her voice had a lilting quality to it and was heavily accented.

“Come again?”  Tony could hardly keep his anger in check.  “Captain America isn’t the property of _anyone._ ”

“Mr. Stark, surely you’re aware of the financial investment required in creating something bold and innovative,” she said.  “Our money funded Lahey’s work, and he signed over the rights to any and all results he produced.”

“What the hell…”  Clint whispered.  “You assholes are all insane.”  He stood closer to Steve.  Protectively.  “He’s a person, not some goddamn specimen! And if you think we’re going to let you kidnap him and torture him with whatever tests you have planned, you have another think coming.”

“Clint,” Steve said, leaning miserably against Iron Man.  He looked like he was about ready to collapse at any second.  “Don’t.”

Tony held him back, pushing him behind the two Avengers.  Now wasn’t the time for Rogers’ self-sacrificing bullshit.  They weren’t about to let Steve surrender himself again for them.  _No chance in hell._   “Leave,” he ordered.  “You’re not getting what you want.”

She was not daunted.  Her eyes glimmered in wrath and frustration.  “We came prepared to fight you, Mr. Stark.  You won’t win.  You can’t protect him from us.”

“Are you deaf?  Let me put this is really simple terms since you’re having a problem understanding me,” Tony said.  “You’re _not_ taking him.”

She coolly cocked an eyebrow.  “I believe it’s you who’s having a problem understanding me.  Captain America belongs to AIM, and he’s coming with us no matter how you fight to stop that.  It would be easier on us all if you stood down.  But I’m prepared to do anything and kill anyone to secure our asset.  So please make the wise choice and hand him over.”

“Not happening.  Go to hell,” Tony snarled.

He couldn’t tell if she was angry or amused or what.  She seemed to flat-out not care about their defiance.  “If that’s how you want to play it.  The Leader did warn me that you Avengers were stubborn to a fault.”

There was no chance to ask who this ‘Leader’ was, because chaos exploded all around them.  Tony had expected the soldiers to fire upon them, but they didn’t at first.  They didn’t want to risk hitting Steve.  Those closest charged, yanking stun batons from their belts.  Clint immediately took advantage of that, unloading the rifle at the group advancing on them, but for every one that fell there were more behind him.  The SHIELD agent tossed the spent gun and ran forward to take them on, fighting smoothly and quickly with lightning-fast reflexes and powerful strikes.  Tony planted himself in front of Steve, pushing the soldier back against the glass observation window of the cage behind them.  He powered the repulsor in his right palm and shot into the crowd.  His HUD was displaying at least forty attackers flooding the lab and another slew coming down the elevator.  _They brought a whole goddamn army!_   Clint was disarming and dropping men, but their assailants came faster, and now they were picking a couple of shots off at the agile archer.  Computers shattered and sparks flew.  A bullet or two clanked uselessly against Tony’s armor. 

“Kill them!” yelled the woman.

The soldiers eagerly followed her orders, abandoning any concern about wounding their prize.  Those farther back in the room fired their rifles.  Bullets clanked against the desks and consoles and Iron Man and slammed into the shatterproof glass behind them.  Clint ducked behind the console and pulled his handgun from his holster.  He reached over the top of the desk to return fire.  Tony used his palm repulsor to knock two of the men back into their buddies and send the whole group tipping over one of the desks.  He wanted to charge into the fray and put an end to this; he’d faced an army of soldiers enhanced by Extremis, so these bastards didn’t stand a chance against Iron Man.  But he didn’t dare move and expose Steve.  “Hey, Star-Spangled Man with the Plan,” he gasped, “we could really use a plan right now.”

Steve didn’t answer.  Tony chanced a look behind him.  The soldier’s pale face was covered in sweat, but his eyes were icy and tight with concentration and his hands were planted against the glass.  It rattled, the two-inch thick pane vibrating and shaking enough that Tony could feel it through his suit.  Cracks spread out from Steve’s fingertips where they were braced against the glass.  _Hulk-proof my ass._   “Clint, get down!”

He didn’t give Barton a chance to respond, releasing Steve to fly toward him and tuck the archer’s vulnerable body under his armor.  The observation window exploded.  Tony grimaced, holding Clint tighter against himself, as Steve threw his arms forward.  He felt air rush by him in a deafening roar, and the glass burst into the lab in a spray of millions of tiny daggers.  The force struck Iron Man’s armor with enough power to knock him forward, to knock _everything_ forward a good three or four yards, and he pushed back to stay steady and keep Clint safe.  He heard shocked and ragged screams.  He looked up and found a significant portion of the men bleeding and moaning on the ground, cut and slashed and covered in glass.

Steve stood still, the area surrounding him completely bare of debris.  Even the floor was cracked under his bare feet.  He was panting, quivering, and wincing.  It was clearly taking more and more out of him every time he used his powers.  That probably wasn’t good.

The alarmed stasis of their enemies didn’t last long.  A pair soldiers staggered to their feet and grabbed for Rogers.  Steve threw one back across the room without even touching him, but the second got his fist in his shirt and yanked hard and swept his feet out from under him.  The remainder of AIM’s men saw their target go down, and they rushed past Tony and Clint.  “No!” Tony cried, scrambling off of Hawkeye to fly to Rogers’ side.

They fought like mad.  Bullets flew everywhere, aimed sloppily in the frantic melee.  In these close quarters, guns weren’t terribly useful, and Clint moved fast, like a black blur, punching and kicking and disabling men quickly.  Tony stood to his back and snatched the soldier closest to him and tossed him.  Another man stupidly unloaded his rifle at him, every bullet crashing uselessly against Iron Man’s chest plate, and when he was done Tony struck him across the face hard enough to spin him through the air.  A couple of soldiers appeared at the other end of the room, and they lobbed a grenade over to them.  The small ball hit the floor and Tony braced himself for an explosion that never came.  Instead a shower of small metal discs, no larger than coins, whistled through the air.  One hit his boot.  Another struck the arm he’d lifted to protect Steve.  And when they did, they shorted his suit.  “What the hell, JARVIS?” he gasped as his HUD flooded with warnings.  His arm fell uselessly to his side, suddenly impossibly heavy, and his boot felt welded to the floor.  The knee joint was stiff and inoperative.

“Some sort of localized EMP, sir,” the AI responded.  “Rebooting.”

“Clint!  I’m stuck!  Clint!”  But Clint was knocked to the side and pushed away, entangled with a group of soldiers on his own.  He was desperately trying to fight his way free, but he couldn’t.  And Tony couldn’t move.

Steve’s scream drew his attention, and he turned as much as he could just in time to see someone hit Rogers across the side with a stun baton.  There were so many soldiers on him now.  Steve shuddered but grabbed the baton against him and sent the crackling electricity back up to the man holding him down.  The thug shrieked, blue bolts crawling all over his body as he jerked and jolted uncontrollably before tumbling heavily to the floor.  A beefy arm wrapped around Steve’s neck, strangling him, and more men threw themselves on top of him in a frenzy of slamming fists and straddling bodies.  He cried out again, this time more in frustration than pain.

Gunfire rained down on Tony as he stood uselessly and tried to pick off the men with his working palm repulsor.  In short order the bastards had Steve pinned to the floor, a whole company of large thugs holding him down.  Steve kicked one and sent him flying with a bone-crushing crunch back into the wreckage.  His arms were yanked down and his legs were restrained and he was overwhelmed and too weak and pained to keep fighting back.

More men were coming.  Men with tranquilizer guns.

“Tony!” Clint cried.

There was no choice.  Tony threw his arms forward and sent Iron Man flying.  Everything except his boot and right vambrace came apart before barreling through the soldiers holding Steve down and closing around Captain America.  The tranquilizer darts shattered and skittered haphazardly as they collided with Iron Man, and the men were forced to release their prisoner.  Steve scrambled away.  There was rage now, _a lot_ of it, and Steve let loose a vengeful shout.  _Holy shit._   The men who’d hurt him were all simultaneously knocked to the floor by a wave of power radiating from Iron Man.  Tony’s knee bent and twisted painfully as it tried to take him down, as well.  He heard screams and things breaking.

“Tony, look out!” Clint yelled.  Tony ducked as a man punched at him.  He was exposed now and still trapped, and they were on him like wolves smelling fresh blood.  He pulled the knife Clint had given him from where he’d slid it into his belt, not knowing the first thing about combat like this but realizing it was better than nothing.  He dodged another blow, pulling on his useless left boot as much as possible but it wouldn’t budge.  He caught the next strike against his vambrace, the man’s fingers breaking against metal, and slashed back.  The blade came away red.  Clint scooped up another gun and fired, raining bullets upon the group of men tormenting them.  A few fell, but many of the shots struck bulletproof vests and only slowed their attackers down.

Something glinted in the back of the room.  Tony blinked the sweat out of his eyes, fighting to catch his breath and wondering what the hell was next.  “You have got to be kidding me,” he hoarsely moaned.

The distinctive sound of a rocket launcher launching a goddamn _rocket_ somehow pierced the din of fighting and his pounding heart.  These people were serious and crazy.  They were going to do this _down here_ , with thousands of tons of earth piled atop this place.A split second later the missile was hurtling toward Tony and Clint.

A flash of red and gold slammed down in front of them.  It took Tony’s beleaguered mind way too long to realize it was Iron Man.  Steve snatched Clint by his shirt and yanked him back behind him.  As he peeled Iron Man off his own body and returned it to Tony, he held out his hand and made the rocket explode right in front of them rather than on them.  And then he held the fire back, driving it away with a cry of effort that escalated into a scream of pain.  For what felt like forever the flames wrapped around them, caressing the invisible sphere of protection enveloping them, and the world shook with the impact.  The heat was so close and strong it was scalding even through the suit, bright and burning, and the orange and yellow light was blinding.  There was no air to breathe.  There was nothing aside from shock and terror.

When it was over, the room was still.  The men who’d been caught in the explosion lay in smoldering piles around them, the few lucky survivors moaning and crawling away.  Tony breathed heavily, the HUD flickering before his dazed eyes as his armor tried to recover from the blast.  Clint was panting, singed, on his knees between Steve and Tony.  And Steve was absolutely still.

The woman was watching him.  She’d moved to the safety of the back of the lab.  Her cheek had been sliced during the melee in a thin red line that traced her face.  She smiled in satisfaction, despite the large number of her soldiers that were dead.  Steve stared back, fear and pain slowly twisting his face.  He faltered and weakly lowered his hand, his fingers blistered and burned.  It was clear from his paling cheeks and dimming eyes that he was finished, that he had been pushed beyond his limits.  He tipped, and she coolly observed every failing muscle, every uneven breath, every halting heartbeat.  Tony reached forward to steady him.  Clint scrambled to do the same.  However, neither of them moved fast enough.  Steve’s eyes rolled back into his head and he fell.

Clint moved because Tony couldn’t; he was still rooted by his malfunctioning boot.  Barton crawled beside Steve’s unmoving form.  “Steve,” he prodded in panic, his eyes wide in terror.  He reached for the pulse point in Rogers’ neck.  “Steve!  Wake up!  _Steve!_ ”  Clint’s horrified gaze snapped to Tony.  _“Stark!”_

Tony turned his gaze back to the soldiers.  There were still so many, so _goddamn many_ , and they were coming closer.  The rocket launcher was trained on them.  “Get back!” Tony ordered, raising his working palm repulsor to shoot the man wielding it.  “Get the hell away!  _Get back!_ ”

The men didn’t listen.  Clint clambered to his feet and guarded Steve, pulling his gun from his holster again, but the first of the soldiers was already on him.  A punch across the face knocked him to the side into a desk.  One of the men turned his tranquilizer gun on him and fired.  The dart pierced Clint’s combat vest and dug into his shoulder.  He lost consciousness instantly and slumped to the floor, hitting his head on the desk on the way down and knocking the needle loose.

 _Oh, no._   “Clint!”  Panic left Tony reeling.  “Clint!  Get up!”  Barton didn’t move.  Blood glistened wetly above one of his ears.  Horrified, Tony pulled harder and harder at his boot.  “JARVIS, do something!”

“The suit is nonresponsive, sir.  The EMP crippled my control over the affected sections.”  The AI’s tone was as flat and even as ever, but Tony heard desperation in it.  “I am trying to reroute power to the emergency release mechanisms.”

It was too late.  Too goddamn late.  Tony couldn’t reach Steve, couldn’t help him, as the soldiers stepped over Clint’s body and grabbed Rogers and pulled him roughly away toward the center of the room.  “Get away from him!” Tony snarled.  His voice broke in helplessness.  He raised his palm repulsor and shot one man, throwing him back from the group.

“Stop it, Mr. Stark,” the woman calmly commanded.  “There’s no point now.  You’ve lost.”  The guy with the rocket launcher stalked closer, his aim never wavering from Iron Man.  The fight was over.  Everyone knew it.  It took a great deal of will but Tony lowered his arm.  _No,_ he thought.  He couldn’t accept this.  _No! Please don’t let them–_

The soldiers worked fast.  They rolled Steve on his back, taking quick stock of his vitals.  Iron Man’s sensors were doing the same.  Steve was alive, at least, but his heart rate had skyrocketed to an unhealthy race again.  He was struggling for breath.  His eyelids fluttered and he tensed under the rough hands restraining him.  Dispassionately the man who’d shot Clint came with the tranquilizer gun and unloaded a few rounds in Steve’s thigh.  Steve jerked and went completely limp and the EKG lines racing across the HUD slowed drastically.  And that was that.  Tony knew beyond any doubt that AIM was walking out of there with Captain America, and there was not a damn thing he could do to prevent it.

“You bitch,” Tony snarled, unable to keep his frustration caged any longer.  Vitriol laced his tone as he turned Iron Man’s hateful glare toward the mystery woman.  She stood with her arms folded across her chest.  “What are you going to do to him?”

“The same thing you try to do with any successful experiment,” she said simply.  “Validate and replicate.”

Nothing so simple had ever sounded so sinister.

Her men were quickly and efficiently securing their prize.  They rolled Steve to his stomach and roughly yanked his arms behind his back.  Cuffs far too thick to be defeated by even Captain America’s enhanced strength were closed around his wrists.  Another band of the same metal was wrapped around Steve’s chest and biceps and fastened.  They pressed tape firmly over his mouth and pulled a black sack over his head and drew it tight.  Tony watched it all, so miserably helpless.  He couldn’t believe this was happening.  He couldn’t believe he was letting this happen!

It took three of the bigger soldiers to haul Steve’s limp body upward and drag him away.  Tony prayed for something – anything – to intervene on their behalf.  He prayed Clint would come to.  That Bruce and Natasha would suddenly arrive.  That Nick Fury and all the wrath of SHIELD would burst into the lab.  That Steve would wake up.  But nobody came, and nothing happened.  Clint was still crumpled and lifeless on the floor.  And Steve’s heart rate was sinking lower and lower, lower than it had been when he’d been so deeply asleep before.  Dangerously low.  He wasn’t going to wake up.  He couldn’t fight.  He couldn’t struggle.  He couldn’t protect himself.

And AIM was leaving with him.  The injured were gathered and helped to limp and stagger toward the elevator.  The dead were left.  Clint was left.  Tony was left, stuck to the goddamn floor, so angry and useless and _helpless_ …  “Where are you taking him?” he demanded.  The pain spilled from his pounding, straining heart.  They ignored him.  He couldn’t see Steve anymore.  They’d carried him into the elevator.  “Answer me, god damn it!  Where are you taking him?”  The woman was waiting.  Tony noticed as the room emptied and the smoke cleared and the dust settled that she was standing beside a few other men dressed in plain clothes rather than combat gear.  They’d been working at one of the computer terminals that had been spared by the destruction.  He realized right away what they were doing.  _Stealing all of our data._   They finished and stood, pulling USB drives from the computer terminals and placing them in protective suitcases and walking away.  “You can’t do this!”

“How are you going to stop us, Mr. Stark?”  The woman shook her head.  “Did you think that preventing Killian from murdering the President could destroy us?  AIM is far more than just one man or one plot.  It’s a vast network, a machine powered by the greatest mind our world has even known.  You can’t stop us.”

“I swear to God if you hurt Steve…”

“You’ll what?  Send SHIELD after us?  Rally the Avengers against us?  We have your captain.  He’s ours now.  Once we stabilize and reproduce the chemical process inside of him, our power will be limitless.  And once we turn him against you, you’ll be bound so tightly by your own grief and guilt that you’ll never be able to bring yourselves to fight him.  Having him destroy you will be easier than we ever imagined.”

“He’ll never do that,” Tony snapped.  “ _Never._ ”

She smiled thinly.  Knowingly.  It was chilling.  “Yes, he will.  The Leader will make sure of it.  You’ve already seen the darkness spreading inside of him.”  Tony blanched.  She seemed to somehow detect his dismay even though she couldn’t see his face.  Her lips curved more into a smug grin.  “And besides, if I were you, I’d be more concerned about your friend over there.  That tranquilizer was designed to bring down a super soldier.  What do you think it might do to a normal man?”  Tony’s blood ran cold.  She confidently strolled up to him.  “I’m not sure, really.  I didn’t have the time to properly test it, so you might want to keep an eye on his breathing.  I would.  Oh, and give this to Doctor Banner, if you wouldn’t mind.”  Boldly she lifted his hand and set a USB stick into it.  “Thank you, Mr. Stark.”

When she was gone and Tony was alone, he finally let go of a furious scream.

* * *

It took JARVIS another five minutes to finally reboot the damaged computer systems inside Iron Man to free Tony’s leg and arm.  It took another few minutes after that for SHIELD to arrive.  The STRIKE Team found Tony cradling Clint’s limp body, pressing the bottom of his own shirt to the gushing wound on the archer’s head to try and control the bleeding.  He’d been counting the weak pace of Clint’s breath and the weak flutters of his pulse against his fingertips and praying to God (which he never did) that Barton hung on until help arrived.  “We need a medic down here!” he shouted.  “Hurry!”

The medical team came almost immediately, bearing a few large bags of supplies and a gurney.  They got Clint on top of it, jabbering quickly about Barton’s vitals.  They placed an oxygen mask around his mouth and nose and measured his blood pressure and prepared a shot of epinephrine to jolt his system and save his fading life.  The adrenaline did the trick.  Clint snapped to awareness, coughing and squirming in pain and shock, his face clenched in misery and disorientation.  He reached for Tony as the medics tried to carry him away.  “Steve?” he gasped, grabbing Stark’s bloodied hand.

“No,” Tony softly answered.  The defeat in Clint’s eyes was heart-rending.  He squeezed them shut in agony, agony that his friend who’d already been through so much had been abducted by the very same monsters who’d experimented on him and _they hadn’t stopped it_.  He balled his hands into fists and choked on his breath.  Tony didn’t have a chance to promise some bullshit about getting Steve back before they took Clint away.

Fury came then, passing the gurney as the team rushed it toward the elevator, and appraised Tony with a stern and alarmed glare.  The wreckage in the lab was disturbing to say the least, but not so much as the desperate gleam Tony knew was shining in his own eyes.  “You have to track them,” he snapped to Fury.  His damn leg ached like a son of a bitch for being twisted so much while he’d been trapped, and his stomach hurt about as badly, but he didn’t care.  He limped to the one of the few working computer terminals and frantically tried to assess how much AIM had stolen.  And the answer to that, unfortunately, was _everything_.  Test results.  Imaging.  Their genetic analyses.  Computer simulations.  Bruce’s work on the sedatives.  Wright’s notes on Steve’s physical examinations from the first one to the last.  All of SHIELD’s data on Lahey and his experiments.  _Damn it!_   “Tell me you can track them!”

Fury had the decency to look ashamed.  “They’re gone.”

Tony glared at him with burning eyes.  “What the hell do you mean they’re gone?  It’s only been a few minutes!  What the hell?”

“Banner’s meeting with Sterns was a trap.”

“No shit!”

A wrathful, frustrated scowl claimed Fury’s face.  “By the time we got word that something was happening here, it was too late.  And we lost contact with the satellites maintaining surveillance on this installation.”

“Lost contact?”

“Our connection with it was severed.  We think it was an inside job.  But honestly if I’d been able to bring agents in on this from the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened!  You should have trusted us from the beginning!”  Tony swore under his breath and looked away.  “We’ve got everyone we can spare on this, and local law enforcement and the FBI are blocking every major road out of the state.”

Tony highly doubted that a few police blockades would stop AIM.  “That won’t matter.  They’ve been playing us since the start.  Somehow they set this whole goddamn thing up and now they got what they wanted.”  Fury grimaced and tensed.  “How the hell does this happen?  How the hell did we let this happen?”  Tony kicked the desk in anger, and the whole thing rattled and pain shot up his foot.  He leaned tiredly into the bent surface, trying to quell his rage.  It wasn’t working.  “It’s our goddamn fault they took him.  Jesus!”

“Stark–”

“There was a woman.  Had black hair and blue eyes a heavy Italian accent.”

Fury’s face softened.  “Did you recognize her?”

Tony shook his head.  “She was obviously in charge.  And she kept mentioning someone running AIM called the Leader.”

“Any idea who that is?”

“No, but we’re dealing with some serious evil here.  Serious beyond mercenaries and mad scientists and human experimentation.  We can’t let them stabilize Lahey’s procedure and replicate it.”

“Is that possible?”

Tony sighed, flustered as all hell.  “I don’t know.  But even if it isn’t, they have one viable, working sample.”  He could barely stop the shudder crawling up his back, thinking of that woman’s taunts and emotionless eyes.  “If they find a way to turn Steve into a weapon…”

“Rogers won’t break.”

“Goddamn it, Nick!  He’s been breaking for days, since that asshole strapped him to a table and did this to him!  They’re turning his mind against him!  How long can anyone hold out against that?”  Fury averted his gaze, wincing.  It was pointless arguing about this.  They were wasting time.  “I really need to talk to Banner,” Tony insisted.  He’d put that USB stick the woman had given him in his pocket.  Part of him had considered giving it over to Fury.  A small part.  For a measly second or two.  Then he’d come to his senses.  “Where is he?”

Fury straightened his form slightly.  “They’re on their way back to the helicarrier.  We can be there in thirty minutes.  I’m going to set you up with Sitwell and have you start looking at some faces.  If you can ID this woman, we can start a trace.  It’s better than nothing.”  Tony nodded.  He closed his eyes against the ache in his body and the throbbing in his head and the pain in his heart.  “Stark, we’ll get him back.”

_Don’t count on it._

* * *

SHIELD’s database of “persons of interest” was huge, but once Agent Sitwell and the techs refined the search parameters properly, they came up with a name right away.  “Monica Rappaccini,” Tony read as her profile appeared on the computer screens across the bridge of the helicarrier.  Those icy blue eyes were glaring at him again, and that shudder itched at his resolve.  He tensed his back and shoulders to keep still.  “Graduated from the University of Padua in 1992 with dual degrees in biochemistry and genetics.  PhD/MD from Columbia.  Wow.  Nobel Prize candidate?”

“She’s an expert in toxins, poisons, and genetic mutations,” Fury said, “who has some questionable views on western civilization.  Somewhere between nearly winning the Nobel Prize for science and joining AIM, she decided humanity was too corrupt to continue to exist as it has.  She founded the pan-European leftist group Black Orchestra, which has caused some disruptions in the political environment of the EU.  Nothing too serious, but it got her a place on Interpol’s watch-list.”

“How did she end up with AIM?” Tony asked.

Sitwell shook his head.  “We don’t know, but she has ties to Maya Hansen.  Apparently they worked together in past, even published some papers as co-authors.”

Tony sighed wearily.  Everything was tying back to that hellish nightmare with Killian and Extremis.  What was that he’d told himself?  _We create our own demons._   “Great.  How does this help us find Rogers?”

“We have the face trace running, and there’s an APB out on her.  Every agent from here to the west coast is working on this.  We’ll find her.  AIM can’t mobilize a force of the size that attacked you without attracting some attention,” Sitwell answered.

Tony wasn’t at all comforted by that.  It had been two hours since Steve’s abduction, and so far not one word of any sort of sign of the men who’d taken him had emerged from SHIELD’s efforts.  He didn’t doubt that SHIELD was capable of conducting a thorough and exhaustive manhunt.  He was just damn sure that AIM and this Rappaccini woman were too smart to be caught, not when they had Steve clutched in their awful fingers.  They had the smarts and the financing and the power to hide from SHIELD; they obviously had for years, and they had obviously slipped moles into Fury’s organization that had done plenty of damage.  In two hours, they could have taken Steve _anywhere._

The rear doors to the bridge opened and Agents Hill and Romanoff entered.  Bruce followed, and Tony could tell immediately that his friend was downright defeated.  He looked exhausted and beaten by worry.  Obviously they’d been informed of what had happened.  Natasha was tense with anger.  Tony felt inexplicably guilty at her icy scowl.  “What’s going on?”

“Nothing so far,” Sitwell explained.  He didn’t look pleased.  “We’re jacked into every wireless device around the country that we can access.  But we’re still having trouble keeping a steady connection to the satellites.  A few of them now.”

Fury looked like he was ready to hit something.  Tony had never seen the normally unflappable Director seem so flustered and lost.  Captain America had been kidnapped on his watch by a subversive science group intent on weaponizing him.  That was pretty damn upsetting.  And it felt like SHIELD was being thwarted every step of the way.  “I want this operation secured,” he said to his top agents.  “I want to know what the hell happened.  Somebody’s calling the shots, and I want to know who.”

“It’s Sterns,” Bruce declared quietly.  He winced, sheepish and disturbed.  “I don’t know how, but he knows things.  Things about Steve and what we discovered that he couldn’t have known.”

Fury released a slow breath.  He was struggling to hold to his temper.  His mind went to the obvious conclusion, but Tony was starting to think the obvious wasn’t the case at all.  Maybe it never had been.  “If there are moles, I want them found.  Hill, go back to the Fridge.   You’re in charge there until further notice.  Question everyone.  Make sure Sterns is in isolation.  No one aside from you sees him or talks to him.  Figure out how the hell he planned all this.  Understood?”

If Hill was at all displeased with her orders, it wasn’t obvious.  She raised her chin and nodded.  “Yes, sir.”  Then she was gone again.

Natasha stood beside Fury.  She watched the maps and images fly by on the touch screens as the computer churned through its search.  They were radiating out from New York.  “They won’t be able to keep the Cap under control,” she said.  “He was too erratic.”

“And if they can?” Bruce said.

“Let’s not speculate,” Fury calmly ordered, “and just find him.”

“She’s the one who took him?” Natasha asked, scrutinizing the image of Rappaccini.  Her quick eyes devoured the information.  “Is there anything else you can tell us, Stark?”

“No,” Tony said.  The USB stick in his pants felt like it was burning a hole in pocket.  He glanced at Bruce who was looking at the picture of Rappaccini like he’d seen a ghost.  That pretty much confirmed everything he’d feared.

“Did Barton recognize her?”

Fury shook his head.  “We don’t know yet.  He’s still unconscious.  Wright said he was lucky.  The cocktail of sedatives and paralytics in that dart would have killed him in a matter of seconds if he’d gotten the full dose.”  It had certainly dropped Steve.  That wasn’t a good thing.  If they had the power to keep Rogers unconscious or docile, then the chances of him escaping or even struggling were greatly diminished.  And Tony highly doubted these bastards would have their consciences wearing on them about keeping a man asleep while they experimented on him against his will.  “I want everything we can find on this woman.  Let’s get her research out to every biochem specialist we have on staff.  We need answers.”

Bruce opened his mouth, still staring at Rappaccini’s stunning face, but Tony spoke before the physicist could.  “Speaking of answers, I’ll go work on figuring out what’s screwing around with your satellite feed.  Might as well do something useful.  I need your help, Bruce.”  Banner jerked a little from his stupor, looking at Tony like he had two heads.  Tony gave him a quick, exasperated look that he hoped no one else noticed.

Fury noticed.  “Stark–”

“Look, I just watched a bunch of assholes brutally kidnap my friend and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it, so I’m going to do this.  Back the hell off and let me help!” Tony snapped.  At least he didn’t have to fake the anger.  Or the shame.  Maybe not even the friend part, if the pain and worry constantly constricting his heart was any indication.

Surprisingly, Fury’s hard expression loosened, and after a short, tense pause he nodded.  Tony didn’t bother getting the scowl off his face or even waiting for Bruce, turning sharply and exiting the bridge.  Banner was smart enough to follow.

Once they were relatively alone in the corridor, Tony started quickly walking to one of the labs aboard the helicarrier, Bruce jumping to catch up with him.  “Who is she?” he demanded in a hushed tone.

Bruce looked troubled.  “God, what the hell is this?  A trip down memory lane?  Has everyone I’ve ever worked with gone insane?”

“I’m still normal enough.”

Bruce managed half a grin and a choked chuckle.  “Her name’s Monica Rappaccini.”

“Yeah, got that.  Who is she to you?”

Bruce took his arm and pushed him to one of the bulkheads around a corner and away from the hustle and bustle of the bridge.  “She was an exchange student at Desert State when I was there in the early nineties.  We had a fling one summer.  This was well before I’d met Betty, and I was lonely and we were working together and–”

“You don’t need to explain the concept of a fling to me, Banner.”

“What the hell is she doing involved in this?”  Bruce looked even more exhausted.  He slumped and brought his hand to his forehead.  “What did she say?”

“The usual bullshit.  She talked about Rogers like she was coming to reclaim AIM’s property,” Tony said in disgust.  “The results of their investment.”

“Christ,” Bruce moaned.  “She was always high-strung.  Way too intense and way too serious.  But I never thought she’d end up…  Who the hell am I kidding?  I’m obviously the worst judge of character ever.”  Tony wanted to make some sort of smart-ass wisecrack about that, but he couldn’t manage the levity.  “Tony, we have to get Steve back.  Sterns is insane.  He _knew_ the super soldier serum’s fighting what Dan’s drug did to him.  How could he have known that?  There’s more going on here, and whatever it is, Sterns is controlling it.”  Bruce winced and Tony thought he saw the glimmer of desperate tears in the other man’s eyes.  “I can’t stop thinking about what they’ll do to him…”

“Don’t.  We can only go forward.”  Tony reached into his pocket.  “Rappaccini asked me to give this to you.”  He held out the USB device.  “I kept this from Fury.  No one else knows.  If Sterns is using SHIELD to play God, the more we keep from them the better.”

Bruce’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and stared at the USB stick like it was deadly.  “What’s on it?”

Tony shook his head.  “She didn’t say.  But we need to find out.”

“Here?”

“I’d rather not, but there’s no time to go anywhere else.”

They continued silently to the lab a few decks down.  When they reached it, Tony secured the doors as best he could with his consultant level clearance codes (a mere pittance compared to the security codes the higher level agents had, but he’d managed to beef them up slightly over the years on his own).  The midday sun was spilling inside, too bright considering how exhausted they both were.  They went to the main computer terminal.  Bruce pulled the touch screen closer as Tony slid the USB drive into a port.  “Looks like there’s one file.”  He spent a second more getting the file’s properties.  “It’s a video.”

That was more ominous than it should have been.  Bruce hesitated for a moment.  “Play it,” he finally said.

On the monitor, Rappaccini’s beautiful face appeared.  Her lush black hair was pulled into a tight bun and her make-up was impeccable, her eyes smoky and heavily lined and her lips stained red.  Those blue eyes were more ice than water, hard edges rather than smooth surfaces.  Closed rather than inviting.  “Hello, Bruce,” she said in that deep, accented voice.  “It’s been so long.  You might be surprised to see me.  Frankly, you shouldn’t be.  You more than anyone knows the imbalances of power in the world.  The stupid surround themselves with it, gathering the strength and determination of the intelligent like they’re harvesting a crop.  They covet it and sell it to each other and use it to fight wars with one another and play with it like children, not knowing at all what they have in their hands.  Governments and armies.  The US and the EU.  NATO.  SHIELD.  Foolish men who understand nothing but act like they know everything and own everyone.  I used to simply accept that this was all humanity could be, the weak chaining the weaker.  The few of us who are too wise and smart to submit spend our lives floundering to keep our minds and creations to ourselves.”

Tony grimaced at the sanctimonious crap.  It never failed to amaze him how the criminally insane and unrepentantly evil could convince themselves of their own self-righteousness.  “AIM was founded to return power to those who deserve it.  Without science, without our understanding of our world, these governments and organizations have _nothing_.  They need to stop using us.  Some of us willingly sell ourselves to them, your friend Stark included.”  Tony stiffened.  “Weakness.  These men who think they control the world…  They need to realize _we_ are the ones who control _them_.  The Leader has taught me that.  He has taught me so much.  So much.  He has shown me a world where we, the _intelligent_ , rule over them, the _mindless._ ”

She smiled.  It was both radiant and repulsive.  “There is a place for you in that world, Bruce.  There always has been.  You’re like us, like me.  Like him.  You see the world for what it really is.  Molecules and chemical reactions and atoms interacting in ways that beleaguer the inferior mind.  You understand power.  And you understand how to create it.”  Tony glanced at Bruce, but he was stiff as a board beside him.  His hands were balled into fists at his side, and there was a dark look in his eyes that Tony didn’t like.  “You’re willing to explore, to experiment, to _prove_ the things you know are true.  You’re maybe a little reticent, but I think the drive to truly be great is there.  The consequences are irrelevant.  You want to _understand_ , and you can.”

Her grin faded slightly.  There had been genuine affection in her gaze before, but now it was gone and replaced with strict seriousness.  “The Leader has afforded you this single chance to be a part of what’s to come.  In two days I’ll be waiting in Santa Fe outside the university library at six o’clock.  You know where.  If you’re there, you will join us.  If not you’re not or you bring SHIELD or the Avengers with you, you will be against us, and we’ll afford you no mercy.”  She lifted her chin a bit.  “Join us, Bruce.  Daniel Lahey was a genius, but he was too swayed by his own emotions to perfect his work.  Despite your condition, I know you can be remarkably calm.  And remarkably detached.  Science does require a level of detachment.  Together I think you and I can produce a weapon that will bring the old world to its knees and burn it down to make way for our new one.  And, perhaps, a way to turn you back into the man you were.”  Tony felt his blood turn to ice.  He looked at Bruce again, but he was still watching.  “The answers are in his blood.  You know they are.”  Bruce wasn’t breathing.  Tony felt his tension.  “And I know you’ve looked.  Maybe I can help you find them.  Imagine that, Bruce.  Free from the monster.  Think about it.  I know you will.”

The video ended.  It had barely been a minute long, but it had felt like an eternity.  The two of them stood there, bathed in the too-bright light of day, feeling lost and alone and out of control.

Then Bruce let loose a stiff sigh.  His eyes focused on the now blank screen and he squared his shoulders.  “I’m going.”

“Bruce, no!  _Think_ , goddamn it!  She’s using you!  They know they need you, and–”

Bruce’s face tightened in fury.  “This is the only way I can get to Steve,” he answered, and he stormed out of the lab leaving Tony to wonder what exactly he meant by that.  He shouldn’t have doubted (this was _Bruce_ , for God’s sake!), but he couldn’t stop himself.  The world was so fundamentally screwed up now that he finally was forced to entertain the suddenly very real possibility that there was no way to fix it.  That shudder finally broke free and wracked its way up his back and for some crazy reason he wanted to cry.


	12. Chapter 12

Steve thought he was dreaming.

Somewhere in the back of his mind it bothered him that he couldn’t be sure anymore.  It bothered him that it was dark and that he couldn’t breathe.  It bothered him that he couldn’t move.  There were memories, things drifting about his head.  Tony and Clint fighting.  Trying to protect him.  Him trying to protect them.  Failing.  Falling.  So much pain.  Hands holding him down.  Then blackness.  Always blackness.

 _“It’s because he’s so weak.”_   The words cut through the storm constantly thundering inside his head.  He knew that voice.  He hadn’t heard it in years, but it was there, tormenting him again as though he’d never forgotten it.  And he realized it was dark because it was nighttime and the lights in their tiny apartment in Brooklyn were always so dim and ineffective.  He couldn’t move because he was too exhausted and his mother was holding him too tightly, her warm arms wrapped protectively around his small, shivering body.  He couldn’t breathe because his lungs weren’t working right, and he felt so miserable because his head was raging with a burning fever.  It was pulsing and wracking in time with his shallowly thrumming heart.  He was so sick.  He was sick and his father was furious.  _“Weak and coughin’ all the goddamn time.  He’s a burden, Sarah!  He’s breaking us!”_

She didn’t say anything, her long, cool fingers stroking tenderly through his hair.  He closed his eyes and tried not to listen, but that voice was booming and it was impossible not to hear it.  They were arguing about him again.  Mostly it was his father yelling, so angry and frustrated at the small, asthmatic boy who was good for nothing, who couldn’t work or help around their sad excuse for a home, who couldn’t even manage playing outside or going to school without taking ill.  He was raging as hot and heavy as Steve’s fever.  And he was drunk.  He was always drunk, even though it aggravated his own scarred lungs.  There was a bottle of something or other, some kind of dark liquid that smelled strong and rank, clenched in his fist.  Steve watched the liquor slosh against the glass as he shook it at them before burying his face back in his mother’s dress.  _“Let him die this time.  Just let him.  He’s takin’ every cent we manage to bring in!  We can’t keep wastin’ our money on this.”_

 _“He’s our son,”_ his mother softly said.

 _“He’s_ your _son,”_ his father snapped, _“and about as pathetic as you are.  He’s turned you into a goddamn nursemaid, sleeping in our bed all the time, the little bastard.  I’m gonna kill him myself if this doesn’t, I swear to God, Sarah.  I swear I will.”_   The door slammed shut.

Steve choked on his breath.  He always did.  And that small hiccup quickly morphed into an unstoppable paroxysm of vicious coughs that shook every part of him.  He struggled weakly for air, writhing with his fingers curled tightly in his mother’s skirt.  _“Easy, baby,_ ” she soothed.  She was scared, and he could tell.  She was scared she wouldn’t be able to get his fever down no matter how she tried to cool his forehead and face and neck and chest.  She was scared that one of these horrible coughing fits would be his last, that the wheeze of breath rattling in and out of him would stop.  She was scared of watching her child suffer.  She was scared they would need more medicine, medicine that they could barely afford and that her husband would beat her for purchasing.  And she was scared Steve’s father would make good on his promise.  _“Breathe,”_ she implored, rubbing Steve’s chest that was so congested and filled with fluid that that simplest of things had become impossible.  _“Just breathe, baby.  Can you do that for me?  You’re so strong, Steve.  Breathe.”_   Tears rolled down her face but her voice was soft and steady as she sung to him, as she prayed for him, as she calmed and quieted him until he could sleep.  _“Breathe.  You’ll be alright.”_

He was breathing now, fast and quick through his nose.  He could hear his rushed panting against the cloth over his face.  It was hot, _burning_ , and he was sweating.  He couldn’t see.  “Get him inside,” somebody ordered.  A woman’s voice with a strong accent that reminded him of fighting in the Italian countryside.  Hands were on him again.  They were pulling him up and forward.  They were harsh and insistent.  They were taking him.

He couldn’t see!

That didn’t stop him from struggling.

There was a sickening snap as bones were broken.  The hands on him.  The fingers latched around his ankles.  The arm around his neck.  Men were screaming in pain, and he moved his wrists apart with everything he had left in him, fighting against the metal binding him.  He was stronger now.  He could break it.  He could–

Whatever they’d put around his chest and arms snapped.  That gave him more room to fight, more room to maneuver, and he ground his teeth together and _pulled_.  “He’s going to rip the cuffs!”

“Bring him down!”

“Give him another dose!  Hurry!  _Hurry!_ ”

Steve howled in anger.  He couldn’t see, but he could hear and he could _feel_ , and he felt every molecule of air between him and the people around him.  The particles were scattered, randomly moving, but he could make them move hard and fast and together.  So he did.  And more men screamed.  _Get up!  Get up!  Run!_

 _“Get up!  Get up!  Come on, kid.  They’re coming!”_   A hand balled into his shirt and yanked so hard it ripped at the shoulder – his mother wasn’t going to be happy about that.  But the hand kept pulling and the boy in front of him kept laughing as they ran down the alleyway away from the kids yelling behind them.  He could keep up.  He could run.  He could fly.  _“Come on!  Run!”_

Something hard and firm hit him from behind and he staggered and skidded to his knees.  His desperate, enraged cry was muffled by the tape over his mouth and the sack over his head.  He heard a gun going off.  Pain spread from his arm, a sharp needling pain.  He recognized it from before.  A warm sensation of losing control suddenly rushed over him, spreading from his heart like a wet, suffocating shroud, and he felt like he was drowning.  More weight pushed him down, weight that seemed like men lying across his chest and abdomen and legs.  “More,” another voice ordered.  Fingers impatiently snapped together, like they were gesturing for something that someone wasn’t delivering fast enough.  “Quickly!”

“Hold him.  Hold him!”

“Easy.  He’s hyperventilating.”  The suffocating cloth was gone from his lower face and he could breathe a little easier but he still couldn’t see.  The roughness of concrete scraped his cheek.  He was so flustered and disoriented that he could only mindlessly squirm.   

“That’s not enough.  Give him more.”

Something stung his leg.  And then another something.  That awful sensation of heat blasted over him in dizzying, miserable waves, and he couldn’t fight the numbness in its wake.  He was gasping again, fighting to stay awake even as the drugs pulled him down.  Frustrated tears burned in his eyes, seeping into the fabric around his head.  He couldn’t stop it.  He never could.

_“Just breathe, baby.  You’ll be alright.”_

* * *

They were moving him.  Steve was vaguely aware of that.  His feet were dragging beneath him, his toes brushing over tiled floors that were cold and smooth.  They’d pulled the sack from his head, and while his eyes blinked languidly against the pull of sleep, he caught glimpses of things.  White rooms.  Labs.  Medical equipment.  Doctors and nurses and researchers.  Soldiers.  _Please, not again…_   That was the only thought in his head.  Terror and horror, but not strong enough to help him.  Panic, but not close enough to drive his leaden, limp body.  He was helpless.  The darkness swirling around inside his head pulled him back to its embraces.

When he woke up, he smelled pine and sap and wet soil.  The air was thick with moisture and warmth and it buzzed with bugs.  He wasn’t sure where they were.  Some godawful forest in southern Germany.  _“It’s so goddamn hot,”_ Dugan groaned from where he lay against a tree.  He’d taken off his jacket and bowler and dropped his gun and was unceremoniously emptying the rest of his canteen over the mess of his ginger hair.  _“Christ, I hate the army sometimes.”_

Falsworth sent him a disparaging look.  _“Wasting water is not wise, Sergeant,”_ he reminded.

 _“Carter and the others’ll be here soon,”_ the larger man grumbled.  _“Never known that woman to be late.”_

 _“Don’t come crying to me when you’re thirsty later_.”

He was so thirsty.  His throat hurt.  “Water,” he moaned.  His mouth wouldn’t work right. It didn’t sound right.  “Please.”

“Is he awake?  He’s trying to say something.”

“No.  I think he’s dreaming.  But get an IV in.  They want him on a constant push of the dendrotoxin.”

He was walking.  Plodding on weary feet.  He couldn’t remember the last time any of them had slept.  This last offensive against HYDRA had been grueling, and no matter what they did, the Commandos couldn’t get the upper hand.  _“You look like a dead man walking, Cap,”_ Jones said from beside him.  Sweat was rolling down the other man’s face in huge, fat beads.  _“Need a breather?”_

“I don’t like his breathing.  Dial back the toxin.  It’s too much.”

“What if he–”

“Take the tape off.  He can’t breathe like this.”

“Wait until it’s time to intubate.  The doc wants him restrained.  She wanted a look at him first.”

 _“Colonel wants to see you, Rogers,”_ Morita declared as he stepped out of a tent in the makeshift base SSR had set up some miles south of the front lines of the last skirmish.  _“Good luck.  He’s throwin’ a pissing fit over us going east.  Breathing fire.”_  Morita laughed.  _“Apparently no good deed goes unpunished.”_

 _“Does it ever?”_ Steve asked.  _“Anyone seen Bucky?”_

 _“He’s off getting his hand looked at.  You don’t remember ordering him to?”_ Falsworth asked.  He seemed worried, which was unusual for him.

Steve grunted.  _“Can’t remember my own name sometimes.  Something’s not right up here.”_   He tapped a grime-covered finger to his temple.

 _“Always said you were a crazy sonuvabitch, Rogers,”_ Dum Dum declared.  _“Have to be to keep putting up with this shit.”_

Dernier muttered something in French, irate and uncomfortable.  Falsworth handed Steve a full canteen.  At least they had water now.  _“Drink.  You don’t look good.  Are you wounded?”_

“Turn it off.  Pull the IV if you have to.  His pulse rate’s collapsing.”

“No…  No, it’s leveling off now.  Just keep an eye on it.  We’ll proceed.”

 _“God damn it, Rogers!  What the hell happened out there?”_   Morita was right.  Phillips was in a damn foul mood.  He was downright furious.  Steve didn’t think he’d ever seen the man be anything other than hardened and gruff, but he was particularly ornery because of the sweltering summer temperatures and because they were all so tired.  And because the higher-ups were apparently livid that the mission hadn’t gone to plan.  They’d won, but there’d been a period there where things hadn’t looked like they were going to go that way.  Phillips wanted to take it out on somebody, all too eager to chew someone out for the mess.  And Steve happened to be a convenient target.  A convenient target that could take the hits.  Everyone’s favorite dancing monkey.  A goddamn whipping boy.  _“You were supposed to be reinforcing the 107 th!  Mind explaining to me how the hell you ended up three miles away?”_

_“Agent Carter got wind that Schmidt’s forces were changing their course and heading for a village–”_

_“Then she should have reported that to me and allowed me to make the call!  This whole op was nearly shot to hell!”_

_“It wasn’t, sir, with all due respect.  And we saved lives.  I thought that was what this was all about.”_

He shouldn’t have said that.  He had more latitude than most soldiers because of who he was and what he did, but insubordination was insubordination.  Still, he was too hot and weary to keep his temper under check.  Phillips looked at him with a hard glare that suggested he wasn’t going to be bested, even if Steve had thirty years of youth and seventy-five pounds of muscle on him.  _“This is about winning a war, and the brass thinks that will happen with soldiers who follow orders, not with heroes who go gallivanting off because they’re thinking with their balls rather than with their brains.”_ Steve flushed in embarrassment and anger, but Phillips went on before he could defend himself.  _“I don’t know what’s going on between you and Carter and I don’t care.  And I don’t give a good goddamn if you’re Captain America.  The Allied Commanders are slamming me for this, and you better thank your lucky stars I’m in a good enough mood to take it.  Star-Spangled Man with the Plan?  Your plan is_ my _plan.  There’s a chain of command for a reason.  Just because you run your unit like a goddamn fraternity doesn’t mean you can call the shots.  Now get your ass out of here.  I can’t stand to look at you.”_

Sufficiently disgraced but not one bit sorry about what he’d done, Steve gritted his teeth and exited the officer’s tent and stormed away.  He made it a good ten feet before someone grabbed his arm and pulled him into another tent.  _“Peggy–”_

 _“Do you ever tire of taking hits, Steve?”_ she asked.  Her hair was thick with the heat, curled more than normal and in a bit of disarray, and there was dirt streaked on her face.  Her skin was glistening in sweat.  He’d never seen her so unkempt.  She was close to him, her fingers pulling on the buckles and zippers of his dirty, bloody uniform.  He wanted to kiss her but he settled for wiping the beads of perspiration from her temple.  She took his hand from her face and smiled tenderly.  Gratefully.  _“Are you hurt?”_

“They want samples.  Blood.  CSF.  Brain tissue.  Everything.”

“Is he going to stay like this?  Do we need more anesthetic?”

“Will it even work?  I thought he metabolized–”

“He’s out.”

He wasn’t out.  He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.  He wanted to struggle, but the commands from his brain never seemed to reach his body.  The soldiers and researchers, nameless, faceless men, had positioned him on an icy, metal table.  They were uncompassionate and precise, moving his arms and legs as though he was nothing more than a giant doll.  Steel cuffs were locked around his wrists and ankles.  He blinked as a bright light was flashed into his eyes.  “Get him on the monitors.”  Things were attached to him, wires and sensors.  Then someone came with scissors and cut the clothes from his body.  So many hands and blurry faces.  He drifted, unable to ground himself enough to do more than notice them coming and going and touching him.

He did more than notice when they started cutting into his body.

Steve screamed in pain and bucked and arched his back as every nerve jolted alive with fire.  The haze of the sedative was ripped away by his emotions (and all of the power that came with them), and the terror and horror and panic raced from the void and pulsed through him.  The cuff around his right wrist snapped clear from the table as he grabbed the doctor closest to him and threw him into the wall.  “We need help in here!” somebody screamed.  The nurses and physicians fled from his struggling form in fright.  “We need help!”

Soldiers rushed into the room, demanding that he stop, that he stand down, but he wouldn’t.  They fired tranquilizer darts at him, darts that he turned back on them with little more than a passing thought.  They slumped to the floor.  But there were too many to fight, and Steve was weak from the drugs disabling him.  He didn’t see the doctor come at him with another needle until it bit its way into his leg that was still bound to the table.  The man scurried away, eyes wide, as Steve collapsed and suffered with the new chemical coursing through his veins.  It still wasn’t enough to calm him.  The room shook with his rage.  He was angry.  He was so angry.

Glass shattered.  The lights flickered and exploded and electricity sparked.  A woman screamed as she was thrown against the far wall.  Alarms wailed, ear-piercing warnings that summoned more soldiers and guards to restrain the prisoner.  A researcher fumbled to load another syringe, but Steve gave him a glance and crushed his hand before he could even get the needle out of its packaging.

However, his defiance ended there.  The sedatives flooding his system were acting quickly now, stealing strength and power, syphoning his thoughts from his head.  And a swarm of soldiers charged into the room.  They quickly restrained him, grabbing his freed right hand and pulling it down.  It took three or four of them to do it.  He wanted to fight them off, but he couldn’t concentrate.  He couldn’t gather his thoughts, and his emotions were being dragged back into the nothingness.  Steve slumped onto the table.  The room spun and he felt sick.  “You fools,” seethed a woman’s voice.  “Get him down and keep him there.”

“We didn’t know if we should give him–”

“Keep him unconscious!  He’s more powerful than you can imagine.”

“Doctor Rappaccini, he’s choking.  He’s choking!”

He was.  Bile burned its way up his throat as his stomach clenched and roiled.  Gagged and mostly bound to the table, all he could do was struggle weakly, panicked and drowning as his mouth flooded, before somebody ripped the tape away.  The hands holding him shifted to prop him up so that his airway drained as he vomited.  The sedatives were sucking the energy from him, one eternity to the next, and he could barely breathe.  Asthma and sickness and fever.  Poison in his head.

When the torture was over, they laid him back down upon the table.  Somebody came to wipe his face.  Weakly he tried to push the hands away, but someone else grabbed his wrist again and secured it at his side.  “I want the subject sedated unless I tell you otherwise.  Understand?”

“But Doctor Banner’s notes specifically expressed his concerns that continued usage of the dendrotoxin could cause cardiac or respiratory arrest, and his breathing was–”

“Give me the needle.  Now.”

Steve was fading.  Slowly he blinked, his senses sporadically feeding information to his failing brain.  There was a woman leaning over him with dark hair and blue eyes.  The woman from before.  She said nothing, disgust boiling in her gaze.  She shook her head and looked up, tapping the air bubbles out of another hypodermic needle.  “Please,” Steve whispered.  “Please don’t.”  She never looked at him, never even acknowledged his plea.  She stuck the needle deep in his bicep and injected him.  This last time would prove to be enough to finally overcome his serum-enhanced metabolism.  He knew it instantly.

“Clean this mess up,” she ordered as she grabbed his jaw and turned his face to peer into his eyes.  He tried to look back, but he couldn’t.  He couldn’t focus.  He couldn’t fight.  He could barely breathe.  He was losing everything now.  Quickly.  She frowned again, angry and cold.  She seemed satisfied with what she saw, though, because she walked away, talking to her research team with long words he couldn’t understand.  The sound of her heels clicking on the tiled floor was thunderous.  His head was throbbing.  His heart was pounding, but the pounding was getting slower and slower and more strained.  He was shaking.  His mouth tasted disgusting.  He was thirsty.  He felt so hot and sweaty and so very tired.

 _“Are you hurt, Steve?”_ Peggy’s calm, loving voice cut through the world dying around him.  Her brown eyes were open and filled with concern.  Her hands were gentle on his shoulders as she let him lean into her.  He wanted to kiss her.  He thought he did.  He thought she leaned into him, too, breathless but sure of herself, and tangled her hands in his hair and kissed him back.  She pushed him down to a bunk, and he was too worn and battered to fight her.  She would take care of him.  Her fingers cupped his face and lifted his chin so that his half-lidded gaze met hers.  She smiled, worried but warm.  So warm and so sweet.  This wasn’t a dream.  He was sure of it.  _“Can you look at me?  Steve?”_

He finally closed his eyes and slipped back down into the darkness.

* * *

Steve had lost and regained consciousness so many times that nothing was making sense anymore.  He didn’t know where he was.  He didn’t know _when_ it was.  1928.  Sometime during the 30s.  1943.  1945.  2012 or 2014.  It was all blending together into a stream of vivid randomness.  Good memories.  Bad memories.  New memories that he knew were bad.  Some small part of his mind still tethered to sanity and self-preservation tried to force these awful things down, but they kept rising.  He was their hapless prisoner.  They were nightmares that twisted and turned so quickly that he could hardly make heads or tails of them.  Violence and blood and pain.  War.  Getting hit and hit and _hurt_ and struggling back to his feet.  That seemed to be all he was good for.

Time was passing.  He wasn’t sure how much.  Minutes.  Hours.  Days.  Somehow it didn’t matter.  He was drifting on the whims of his mind, his mind that now saw the world so differently than it had before Daniel Lahey got his hands on him.  Everything was in motion.  Everything was alive.  Guns and glass and people and power.  So much power.  It was calling to him all the time, the only constant in this existence of his that was now continually shifting and spinning and changing and moving.  It was in his body, in his blood, in his brain.  In his heart.  It was terrifying and exciting all at once, horrifying but so incredible.  He could do things he’d never dreamed.  He could _feel_ the world down to its very molecules and the forces between them, and he could alter them just with a single thought.  Not even a single thought.  A fleeting emotion.  The slightest inclination.  A wish.  A whisper of his soul.  He could change things, remake them as he saw fit.  That was why he’d stood up to the bullies.  Why he’d joined the army.  Why he’d become Captain America.  Why he led the Avengers and worked with SHIELD.  He wanted to protect people.

A shield between the darkness and the light.  A shield against evil.

_Not a shield, Captain.  A weapon._

Steve came awake with a gasp.  He immediately squeezed his eyes shut against the pain.  His brain felt like it was pulsing, expanding and slamming against his skull, throbbing with power.  Gritting his teeth and dropping his forehead to his knees was all he could do to ride out the agony.  He felt the floor shake beneath him and the wall shake behind him and his heart tremble in his chest.  The pain was so strong it almost dragged him back to the darkness and the delirium, but he was stronger.  _Not this time._

For a seeming infinite period, he wavered, trapped between awareness and the hell inside his head.  When he finally came away from it, he was aware, truly _aware_ , for the first time in what felt to be forever.  He was in some sort of cell.  It was fairly big and built of white walls and white floors and a white ceiling.  He was bound to the wall behind him, his arms held above his head by metal cuffs that were too strong to be broken (he vaguely remembered trying once and getting shocked for his efforts – somebody was watching him).  He’d woken up here before.  The day before, maybe.  He couldn’t remember for sure because there were huge spans of time missing from his mind, gaps that his brain was attempting to fill with other confusing things.  He only knew for sure that AIM had kidnapped him.  AIM was doing things to him.  That was why Lahey had done his experiment.  The bastard had been working for AIM.  And now AIM wanted to make him into a weapon.  AIM wanted to figure out how to make him hurt people.

He couldn’t remember much beyond the table and the blurry faces and voices.  And pain.  So much pain.  He couldn’t recall a time without pain anymore.  It seemed forever ago that he’d had any control, that he’d felt normal.  That he and Clint had been talking about the last Dodgers game on their way to Lahey’s lab and maybe getting out to LA sometime to see them play before the season ended.  He had laughed and Clint had laughed, easy and simple, Barton deriding Stark for thinking he could outdrive them…

Steve swallowed a sob and pulled his knees up to his brow again. 

“Hey, Stevie.”  That soft voice with its familiar Brooklyn accent cut through the haze.  “You’re lookin’ rough there, kid.”

His head was heavy so it was difficult to look up.  But he did.  “Bucky,” he said.  His voice was very hoarse, a weak croak compared to its normal, commanding strength.  Relief rushed over him, strong and warm, as he saw Bucky standing in front of him, dressed in that awful brown suit he always used to wear because he thought it made the dames swoon over him.  That damn ugly brown suit.  Steve smiled but started shivering again.  “Been looking all over for you.  Everywhere.”

“I know.”

“You came.”

“’Course I did.”  Bucky smiled, too.  It was that knowing smile, that same one he always wore when Steve had come home beaten up.  When Steve had gotten himself hurt.  Steve was getting himself hurt all the time.  “You’d get yourself killed otherwise, you punk.”  He stepped closer, his scuffed shoes loud in the box in which they were trapped.  “You knew that I’d be here.  Not gonna leave you.”  There was a touch of admonishment in his tone.  “Come on.  When have I ever, huh?”

Steve didn’t answer.  Twice.  Once when Bucky had gone off to war.  Once when he’d fallen from the train.  But he was here now, so there was no reason to delve into that.  Bucky sighed and sat beside him, close enough that Steve immediately sagged into his familiar warmth.  “How are you feeling?” Bucky asked.

Steve groaned and let his eyes slide shut again.  The lights were too bright.  Everything was so much.  Too much.  He breathed deeply.  That stupid brown suit smelled like their old apartment and Bucky’s mother’s cooking and cigar smoke from the places they used to go and perfume from the women Bucky used to date.  It smelled like home.  “Steve?  You with me?  How’re you feeling?”

“Not good, Buck,” Steve whispered.  Back before, when they’d been boys and young men and even soldiers during the war, he’d always said he was fine.  When his father had hit him.  When he’d been sick.  When the bullies had beaten him up.  When his mother had died.  When he’d been injured during battle.  He’d always said he was fine, that he was okay.  That it wasn’t as bad as it looked and he wasn’t hurt as much as he seemed.  He’d heal.  It wasn’t a lie, really.  He always thought he could.

But not this time.  “It hurts,” he said.  “It hurts real bad.”

“I know.”

“They’re doin’ stuff to me, Bucky.”  His words were slurring.  “They’re…  I think they cut into my head.”  Memories (particularly of _that_ unpleasant experience) prodded against the edges of his consciousness.  He couldn’t look at them.  He simply couldn’t.  “I don’t know what.  I don’t know.  They’re gonna make me…”

“They can’t make you do anything,” Bucky said.  He sounded certain and strong.  He set his arm around Steve’s shoulders even with Steve’s hands bound as they were.  Steve’s whole torso and upper body fiercely ached, and he sagged as much as he could against Bucky.  He closed his eyes.  They were burning with tears, but he was goddamn tired of crying and feeling so helpless and _damaged_.  “You know they can’t.  Nobody can make you do anything.”  Bucky smiled that stupid smile of his again.  Steve felt it against the crown of his head.  “You’re Captain America, aren’t you?”

Steve couldn’t help but grin a little, too.  “You hate Captain America.”

“I don’t hate Captain America,” Bucky answered.  Gently his hand massaged the knots in Steve’s shoulders from having his arms above his head for so long.  Bucky hadn’t held him like this in years, not since they’d been kids and bunking together in Bucky’s bed in his folks’ apartment because it had been too miserably cold for Steve to sleep on the floor, especially with his lungs as bad off as they were.  Bucky shook his head.  “I gotta admit I’m not a fan of the outfit.  But mostly I just don’t like what being Captain America does to you.  Case in point: this crazy bastard would’ve never pumped his poison into you if it wasn’t for that stupid serum you let the army inject you with.”

Steve groaned to that.  “Probably not.”

“And you being you had to throw yourself on the wire to protect other people.  One man is worth less than two or five or ten or a hundred, right?”

“Please don’t lecture me, Buck.”  He honestly didn’t think he could take it.

“I’m not gonna lecture you,” Bucky said, long-suffering.  “Just thinkin’ this is a raw deal, is all.”  Steve had honestly been wondering the same thing.  The gravity of the situation became undeniable to him during these moments of clarity.  He didn’t know if the others were coming for him, if Clint and Tony were even alive.  He didn’t know if he could hold out if AIM tortured him or tried to turn him.  He’d been trained to withstand pain, but not when he had to fight his own mind as much as he had to fight them.  Maybe it would just be better if… 

“Don’t you dare think that.”

Steve closed his eyes.  “It might be the only way.”

“Don’t you _dare_ think that!” Bucky snapped.  He was furious.

Steve winced.  “I can’t hold on.  I can’t think straight.  I–”

“Yes, you can.  You can hold on.”

“If they turn me against the others…”  Against SHIELD.  Against Natasha and Tony and Bruce.  Against Clint.  The idea hurt even more than the migraine shooting through his skull, and it frightened him more than dying, more than the nightmares going on inside his head.  “I can’t let that happen.  I can’t let them take me.”

“They won’t.  They can’t, you hear me?  You’re Captain America.”  He pulled away from Steve’s side and knelt in front of him and grabbed his face.  His eyes were sharp and insistent, and his expression was angry.  Bucky always had a short temper.  And he didn’t pull his punches or tolerate nonsense like this.  “You don’t think that.  You don’t quit.  You don’t.  Goddamn it, Steve, you can’t quit.  Even if they strip every other thought out of your head, this one thing is still going to be there: you keep fighting.”  Steve sagged in his bonds.  He was so exhausted.  He didn’t think he could.  “I don’t care how tired you are.  I don’t care if it hurts.  I don’t care if you’re scared.  You’re Steve Rogers.  You don’t quit.  You never have, and you never will.”

“Please get me out of here, Buck.  _Please._ ”  He never begged.  _Never_.  Not during all the times in their youth when maybe he should have.

Bucky’s face fractured in grief.  “I can’t,” he whispered.  “You know this isn’t real.”

Steve closed his eyes, but that didn’t stop the hot rush of tears.  The sob itching in his throat escaped.  Bucky roughly pressed his lips to Steve’s forehead and tucked his head to his shoulder.  The brown suit that smelled like home muffled his cries.  “I know what this is like.  I know what it’s like to have somebody do things to you.  Horrible things, and you can’t even remember what or why.  You think you’re alone, pal, but you’re not.  You know how I know that?”  Steve didn’t answer.  “Because when this happened to me, you came for me.  They’ll come for you.  Clint and Howard’s son and the others.”

“You don’t know that,” Steve said softly.  “I don’t know that.”

“Maybe not.  But you need to believe it.  You think Clint’s gonna leave you here?  I know how close you are with him.  A little like we were.  You think I’d ever stop trying to find you?”  Steve sighed through his next sob, trying to pull himself together if only a little.  “They’ll get you out of this.  They’ll fix it, just like they said they would.  You just gotta hold out until then.  And your body?  It’s fighting, too.  You know it is.”

Words came out of the haze.  Words he’d heard before.  _“The rate of genetic transformation is continuing to decline.  It must be the serum counteracting Lahey’s drug.”_

_“The reaction isn’t stable.  His powers aren’t controllable.  They may even be diminishing.”_

_“That’s unacceptable!  How do we stabilize it?”_

Bucky’s voice was a low, comforting rumble against his ear.  “That serum may be a raw deal, but it doesn’t surrender, and neither do you.  I know that ’cause you were strong _way_ before they turned you into Captain America.  You’ve always known everything there is to know about beatin’ the long odds.  Have since the day you were born.  Your ma always said that, you know.  You’re so goddamn stubborn.  It’s what makes you such a pain in the ass.”  Steve grunted half a hoarse laugh.  Something warm blossomed in his chest.  Hope.  Trust that maybe this could be okay somehow.  That he could be okay.  “You fight, Stevie.  That’s what you do.  You fight.  And you’ll keep fighting.  I know you will because I know you.  You’re a good man.  Nobody’s taking you.”

He could breathe a little easier.  The pain wasn’t so sharp anymore.  Things felt softer.  Clearer.  “You’re right, Bucky,” he said quietly.  He sniffed, blinking away the remainder of his tears.

Bucky pulled back and cupped his face again.  He braced his forehead against Steve’s.  “Always am, aren’t I?” he said with a smile.

“Yeah,” Steve murmured.  Suddenly he couldn’t keep his eyes open.  The tension left his muscles.  He felt like he could rest easy.  Just for this moment.

“Sleep, pal.  I’m watching over you.  Just like old times.  You’re not going it alone.”

“Bucky…”

“Sleep.”

He did.  For this moment, he wasn’t afraid.  Bucky was there.  Bucky would protect him.

* * *

“Wake up.”

Steve jolted to awareness.  He pushed himself back against the wall.  The woman stood there, flanked by a dozen people in lab coats and even more soldiers dressed in black with rifles and stun and tranquilizer guns pointed at him.  His heart leapt in his throat.  The world exploded in motion and color around him, a rush of power tied to the rise of his panic, and all he could think was he needed to escape.

The woman smiled humorlessly.  “I can see in your eyes that you’re thinking about attacking us and attempting to run.  Before you do, know that it’s impossible. As fast and strong as you are, you’re not fast or strong enough to break free and kill all of us before we sedate you again.  I would rather not engage in that, and I require that you be alert for this next part.  Also know that I can send enough voltage through the cuffs around your wrists to stop your heart.  Believe me when I tell you that would be rather unpleasant.”  She cocked her head, and Steve could see her thumb was poised over a small device she had in the palm of her right hand.  “It would be much easier on all of us if you cooperate.”

“Why the hell should I cooperate?” Steve demanded.

She looked at him as though she was an irritated parent needing to explain yet another blatantly obvious thing to a child.  “Because you’re sick and in pain.  You want to get better, and we want to find a way to make you better.”

“You’re a goddamned liar,” Steve snapped.  He wasn’t going to let her use his emotions against him like this.  “The only thing you want to figure out is how to stop the serum from stopping Lahey’s drug.”

She was nonplussed.  “Yes, and when we do that, the pain will stop with it.”

“I’d rather suffer with the worst pain imaginable for the rest of my life than help you.”

“The rest of your life?  You should know that that may be considerably shorter than you realize.  This… _war_ , for lack of a better term, occurring inside your body is damaging you.  Your DNA is showing signs of instability.  If it denatures, it will result in cell death.  Doctor Banner began to detect this before we took you, and it has accelerated.  He was concerned that it could prove fatal, and he’s not prone to exaggeration.  Unless we control the mutation process, you could die.”

Steve didn’t care.  It was an empty threat, even if it was true, and he didn’t think it was.  At least not wholly.  He felt _better_ , more grounded.  More certain that this was real and that he was in control.  He knew it was the serum.  It was protecting him.  Healing him, like it always had in the past.  “I’ve already died from this once.  It wasn’t permanent.”

She actually laughed at that.  “You’ve been lucky.  You’ve received two of the most potent serums that biomedical research has _ever_ produced to enhance human evolution.  That’s an incredible gift.  One not deserved by someone not willing to use it to its fullest potential.”  She sounded envious.  “Be that as it may, rest assured that under it all you are still human.”

“Not a good thing to be reminding someone you’re trying to turn into a weapon,” Steve said coolly.  “Who are you?  How do you know Bruce?”

The woman’s smile tightened.  “He’s an old friend,” she answered.  She didn’t answer the other question, and she didn’t elaborate more.  “Enough.  This is of no concern to you.  Don’t struggle.  I want to test you in a controlled environment, but I will test you here if you test me.”

That didn’t sound good.  It had felt empowering to be so in calm and in control, to have some semblance of command over his own situation, but now the fear came back.  With the fear came that intense buzz of _power_ in his head, and the world was moving again.  He swore he could see the air moving in and out of the woman’s body, the way the soft tissues of their mouth and throat and chest were working in concert to make her breathe so effortlessly.  He was lost in that for a costly moment, lost in fighting the urge to just _stop_ her lungs, because when he came back to himself, he was surrounded by the men in lab coats and the soldiers.  Steve stiffened, clenching his jaw.  “Don’t,” the woman warned.  Her thumb was still poised over the device she had, the one that surely controlled the cuffs.  She pressed a different button and his hands came away from the wall.  The soldiers wasted no time in grabbing Steve and dragging him to his feet.  They pulled his arms behind his back and the cuffs reattached to together.  The muscles of his shoulders and arms were tingling and aching so badly he didn’t have it within himself to even test the strength of his bonds, but something told him that breaking them wouldn’t be possible, at least not without a struggle that would surely be noticed.  And by the time he did that…  “Now walk.”

They did.  Steve tried to stay calm, to keep that haze of energy contained within him, but it was damn difficult.  The vague hints of the enormity of this place he’d had before were confirmed as this huge group of doctors and soldiers led him down the halls.  He forced the panic down, forced the fear to succumb to rationality.  Wherever they’d taken him wasn’t underground; some of the rooms they passed had windows.  If he dipped into that fog inside his head, he could feel a million tiny patters of rain striking the panes of glass.  He could feel the electricity run through the walls and into lights and computers.  People’s hearts beating as they passed him.  Feet striking the tiles on the floor above them.  Minute vibrations of the building’s cooling system forcing air through vents.  He could feel all these things, but it wasn’t so sharp, so upsetting.  The images in his mind were hazy.  That painful blur of motion was indistinct.  And the bad memories and the nightmares were indistinct, too.  It was all there, but distant.  Like there was a wall between him and the things that hurt him.  The same wall there always had been.  The same shield.  The serum.  His own strength.  Bucky was right.  It was still alive underneath all the damage.  It was still fighting.

Logic trumped madness for the first time in days.  He must have been up at least a few floors because the electricity was going up the walls and there were footsteps above and below him.  He could feel the heat of people, which felt different from the heat of computers and equipment, and there were way too many of them for him to fight.  She was guarding him with a veritable army.  He wasn’t strong enough to take down so many at once; if they overwhelmed him, he had no doubt that they would sedate him again.  And even if he somehow escaped and defeated them all, he would have to find his way out of here, wherever here was.  For all he knew, he could be on the other side of the world.  It started to occur to him that maybe now wasn’t a good time for his powers to be weakening.  He despised them, this disease eating away at who he was, but he knew he needed them.  And he knew that feeling better was a result of them diminishing.  _He knew it._   The irony that he could finally mount some sort of logical defense that was more than just mindlessly lashing out right when the hysteria powering his newfound abilities quieted to the point where he didn’t think he could use them…  He ducked his head and tried not to cry or laugh.

They led him down a short stairwell to some place that _was_ on the ground.  That was about all he could tell about it because it felt like it was shielded.  It was a huge room, with walls made of thick concrete and steel.  There was nothing in it.  Absolutely nothing.  Nothing but him and the slew of soldiers threatening him.

The woman’s heels echoed as she walked closer.  She slid her thumb over the device again, and Steve’s wrists were loosened.  He was surprised for a second at the sudden freedom, but he didn’t waste more than that before pulling away from the men restraining him and twisting back toward the door.  “No,” she warned.  One jolt of electricity through his wrists was enough to drop him, and he went down hard with a hoarse cry.  The pain arced across his body, effectively ripping his thoughts away, and he couldn’t do anything aside from convulse uncontrollably on the cold floor until she stopped it.

Steve gasped in relief, rolling onto his side and pulling his legs to his chest in an instinctive attempt to protect himself.  The _clack clack_ of her shoes grew louder as she came to stand over him.  “Cooperate.  We need to correlate your abilities with the levels of genetic transformation in your neurons.  In order to do that, I have to see what you can do.”

Steve spat a mouthful of blood from where he’d bitten his tongue to the floor.  “Go to hell,” he groaned as he rolled again and tried to push himself up.  His body was so abused that it was too difficult to get his feet beneath him, and he slumped onto his knees.  Still, he looked up at her in defiance.  “You can’t make me do anything.  And you won’t kill me.”

“You’re right.  You’re far too valuable.  I can’t kill you.  But the Leader already instructed me on your particular brand of weakness.”

One of the scientists was busily entering data on her pad when two of the soldiers grabbed her by the arms.  “What are you–”  She squealed in surprise as she was shoved forward, closer to Steve.  Her pad clattered to the floor as they aimed their rifles at her head.  Steve watched the random display of violence, dismay and dread growing in the pit of his stomach.  He tried to hold his expression into a stoic glare, but he was too tired and afraid to really manage it.  The woman whimpered, shivering with her legs bent awkwardly beneath her and her hands raised in the air and tears spilling down her white face.  “Doctor Rappaccini, please, _please!_   I didn’t do anything!”

The woman, Rappaccini, ignored the scientist her men had taken hostage and stared down at her captive.  “Get him up,” she said, and three of the soldiers roughly grabbed Steve’s arms and pulled him to his feet.  Steve wobbled dizzily for a moment.  He tasted blood at the back of his throat, blood that he knew was coming from his nose, and tried not to be sick.  That control he’d finally found was fleeting, and he knew it, and holding onto it was all he could do to not crack.  “Now,” she said coming closer.  She watched uncaringly as blood dripped down Steve’s face and he brought a shaking hand up to try and stop it.  “I want to see what you can do.”

Steve could barely breathe his body began to shake so badly.  He swallowed thickly.  “I – I can’t control it like that.”

“Have you tried?” she asked.  Behind her, the rest of her researchers were feverishly taking notes and looking small and insignificant in hopes that she wouldn’t turn to them for additional leverage.

“Yes,” Steve said sharply, “but it doesn’t always work.”

She looked at him squarely, not at all convinced.  “Try harder.”  It wasn’t a request.  Steve glanced at the quivering woman over Rappaccini’s shoulder.  She was weeping, her breath a wheezing sob of abject horror.  Steve’s mind immediately went back to the moment he’d saved the girl in the bank, the girl held at gun point.  He went back to that blank place inside him where only the desire to save her and hurt the man hurting her had been.  He didn’t know if he could keep himself there.  This moment of clarity was affording him a new measure of understanding.  He thought he could control it when he was trying to protect people.  He didn’t know why ( _it’s because you’re Captain America and that’s what you do – you protect people)_ but it was true.  The family with the bus.  The woman at the bank.  Tony and Clint in the SHIELD lab.  But his emotions always got the better of him, and the pain got stronger, and then…

Did she know that?  Did this Leader person?  _How?_  

“Try,” she warned again.

Steve drew as deep a steadying breath as he could manage.  “What do you want me to do?”

* * *

Everything.  Too much.  For the first hour or so, Steve was able to stay conscious and aware enough to think.  What they wanted started off simple enough.  “Levitate this.  Spin it in the air.  Hold it perfectly still.”  He did these things, following their commands like little more than a robot, as they measured his vitals and ran their scans and took their readings.  Most of the time he was able to do what they asked, and when he wasn’t, the image of that crying woman held completely at their mercy was enough to motivate him.  “Break this into two pieces.  Four pieces.  Into as many as possible.”  He did it.  The rage was there, getting stronger and stronger as the pain in his head increased.  It was increasingly difficult to keep it under control, to not send the shards of glass and plastic and metal toward the men holding her at gun point.  Somehow he kept himself calm.  Somehow.

But his strength was waning.  They kept at him.  It turned to manipulating fire, putting it out or starting it, raising the temperature of objects.  Bending flames, twisting them around things and around other people and himself.  He wasn’t strong enough to stop himself from getting burned.  That made the pain worse, and he slipped in and out of consciousness for a moment, exhaustion grabbing at him with greedy fingers and ripping at his control.  His nightmares ripped at him, too, tearing him apart a piece at a time.  Electricity.  His control over that wasn’t as efficient.  Could he power machines.  Maybe before he could – he was pretty sure he had with Tony’s suit – but now he couldn’t.  Could he turn one type of energy into another.  Could he deflect it, direct it, create it or destroy it.  The latter two weren’t possible, and they _knew_ it.  Even he understood enough about the fundamental nature of science and the universe to understand that, but they kept driving him to try.  “I can’t,” he moaned, down on his knees and trembling.  “I can’t.”

They made their notes.  The parts of him drowning in pain and fatigue hated them, their smug faces and their pensive expressions.  Their goddamn lab coats and murmurs to each other.  Their conclusions and deductions.  Monsters, all of them.  Standing and doing _nothing_ while one of their own was unrepentantly used to force another human being into difficult and dangerous experiments.  Steve used to respect scientists; Erskine had been a hero to him, a true symbol of strength and courage and intelligence and integrity.  He admired Bruce and Tony for all the good they did with what they knew.  But this…  He _hated_ them.

That hate got the best of him once or twice and he found himself on the floor, the seconds he’d spent electrocuted and seizing erased from his memory.  He suffered with the aftershocks, too beaten and weary and sick to do much besides throw up what little remained in his stomach and ride out the waves of agony.  They pulled him back to his feet and brought new things into the room from outside.  Huge things.  Cars and tractor trailers.  “Lift them,” Rappaccini ordered.  He didn’t think he could.  “Lift them.”

He staggered toward the car, trying to see straight.  He didn’t know modern makes and models, but it looked older and heavy.  He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to concentrate through the pain intent on splitting his head open.  When he reached inside himself for the power, when he looked at the car and saw it moving, saw its iron and steel and rubber and paint, saw to its very particles…  When he looked, all the blackness inside him pushed against his will and tried to take him down.  It was as much work to hold that back as it was to try and raise the car into the air.  His whole body shook as he did.  The car rattled and vibrated before he managed to get it off the floor a few feet.  “Hold it there.”  He did for a torturous minute, and after that the whole thing went down to the floor with a thud.

Steve wavered.  He nearly collapsed, but one of the guards caught him on the way down and steadied him on his feet.  He could hardly keep his eyes open.  He came back to himself after succumbing to the ragged pounding of his heart between his ears for what seemed to be forever.  Rappaccini was there in front of him.  She didn’t look pleased.  Vaguely he wondered from the impatient frown on her face how much time had passed.  “Now the other.”

He turned throbbing eyes to the tractor trailer.  “I can’t,” he said.

“You were capable of more than this before,” she said.  “The damage to Stark Tower.  Doctor Banner noted in a few of his reports that you stopped the power of the Hulk on more than one occasion.  This is nothing comparatively.”

He didn’t really remember the first time he’d stopped the Hulk.  It had been before everything had started to fall apart inside him, that he knew.  The other times he’d been out of control.  Was that what she wanted?  For him to lose control?  Was that what this was about?  She had no idea how dangerous that was.  _Show her._ “I can’t,” he said again.

“You need to try,” she reminded him.

“Doctor, he needs to rest,” one of the others said.  “He’s severely dehydrated.”

She ignored him.  “Do it,” she ordered.

Steve didn’t know why he obeyed.  There was the threat of the woman’s death and his own torture, but more than that, he just wanted this to be over.  He wiped his mouth, fighting to straighten to his full height.  He turned to the trailer, to its tons of steel and iron, and saw it as he’d seen the car.  The darkness climbed inside him, reaching for him as he reached for the trailer.  The pain was excruciating.  He ground his teeth together, throwing both hands toward the trailer as though the physical action could help.  His heart was pounding.  The room fell away.  The scientists. The soldiers.  The hostage and the guns.  The woman.  There was only the trailer and his beating heart and the anger inside of him pulsating and growing like a tumor.  Sweat covered his scalp and dripped down his face.  Blood dripped, too.  But he didn’t stop.  And he lifted the trailer.

The rage.  It broke free.  _Kill them.  Crush them.  They’ll hurt you.  They’ll hurt you.  Kill them all._

_Show her what you can do._

_No!_ He pulled it back. Steve screamed and tossed the trailer to the opposite end of the room.  It crashed against the wall with a horrific, reverberating bang.  He watched it settle against the concrete, a mass of distorted metal that continued to twist as he directed his anger at it.  When he was spent, he went down onto his knees.  Tears flooded his eyes, and he buried his face in his bloodied, burned hands.

The room was silent.  Or he didn’t hear.  His senses seemed almost shorted-out for what felt like a long time.  He breathed, dropping his chin to his chest and his hands to his thighs.  It was all he could do to stay upright.  Inside he was raw and bleeding.

That shadow loomed over him.  “Look at me.”  He was too worn.  His eyelids wouldn’t open, and his neck hurt too much to lift his head.  “Look at me.”  There was a threat in that soft, husky tone, and he found himself following the demand.  “You’re not finished,” Rappaccini declared.

Steve couldn’t move.  The exhaustion had seeped into every fiber of muscle and bone in his body.  But the guards lifted him to his feet again by his arms and dragged him back towards the rest of the group.  The woman was still there.  The guns were still trained on her.  They dropped Steve in front of her.  “There’s one more test we need to perform.”

Steve’s thoughts were so scattered that he didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.  The doctor who’d mentioned before that he needed rest was selected from the group.  The man was shocked and his face blanched as guns were shoved in it.  “Kill her,” Rappaccini coldly said to Steve, “or we’ll shoot them both.”

He didn’t make sense of that for a horrific moment.  His gaze widened as it moved from the sobbing woman to the terrified man to Rappaccini’s stoic face.  “What?” he whispered.

“You heard me,” she said.  “You’ve broken bones before.  You’ve killed with these powers before.  I’ve seen it.”

“That was in defense.”

“I want you to crush her throat.”

“No.”

“Choke her.  Do it now.”

“No!”

There was no negotiation.  No taunting or manipulating or demanding.  The rifles fired, and two bodies hit the floor.

Steve was lost.  He closed his eyes to the sight of the blood draining from the corpses.  He was numb.  No rage.  No despair.  No guilt or grief or pain.  Nothing.

Rappaccini shook her head in disgust again.  In disappointment.  She turned to what remained of her research staff and calmly and simply announced, “Prep him for another dose of Lahey’s drug.”

* * *

Steve thought he was dreaming.  Reality had turned into nightmares.  Nightmares bled into reality.  He wasn’t sure which was which anymore.  Maybe that had been the point of it all.  To drive him crazy.  To drive him into nothing and no one.  He was so tormented and fatigued that he hardly fought as they forced him down and injected him with another sedative that made his limbs leaden and his mind foggy and useless.  They needed to keep him docile as they dragged him away, heading through the building to someplace else.  He didn’t know.  He couldn’t fight.  He didn’t fight.

There was some sort of frantic conversation going on around him.  “Doctor, we don’t even know if he’ll survive another Gamma exposure.”

“He’ll survive it.  Erskine’s serum has kept him alive through all this.  It won’t stop now.”

“We have data to analyze now.  Tons of it.  We can measure this against new samples after he–”

“That won’t tell us anything beyond what we already know.  His powers should have fed off of his emotions.  The pain became devastating, but he held his rage back.  He kept himself under control.  He should have destroyed us, but he didn’t.”  That gave the others pause.  “The super soldier serum is preventing him from reaching his full potential.  We need to correct that.”

“There’s no indication that a second dose of the drug will do what you think it will do!  We need time–”

“There is no time.  The serum is writing his DNA _back_ to what it was.  It’s winning this war.  We need to overwhelm it, beat it down now.  If we wait, we lose what little ground we have.”

“If we do this without being reasonably certain he’ll live, that will be a rather moot point, won’t it?”

“We don’t even know if we have Lahey’s serum right.  We’ve got no way to test it!”

“You’ve had two weeks, plus the data we stole from SHIELD.  It had better be right.”

“And if it’s not?  We could kill him.”

“You knew the risks when you agreed to be part of this project.”

“Yes, but–”

“Either you are with me or against me,” Rappaccini hissed.  “And if you are against me, you have no place in the Leader’s new world.”

The argument faded.  He was being carried away.  Wearily he took note of where he was.  Another lab.  Another goddamn torture chamber.  Steve’s mind was lost in a haze, but his body struggled weakly of its own accord when he saw the metal table and the equipment around it.  “No,” he moaned.  He tried to pull free as the soldiers moved him inside the smaller room.  “Not again.  No.  Please don’t do this to me.”

“On three.  One, two, three!”  They lifted him onto the table and held him prone on his stomach.  They positioned his hands on either side of his head, and his forehead was placed onto some sort of padded headrest.  The cuffs around his wrists immediately magnetized and held him down.  He kicked and squirmed, but his ankles were caught and restrained, too.

“Please,” he whispered.  “I don’t want to.  _Please._ ”  Nobody listened.  Nobody cared.  The soldiers stayed, their guns pressed to his bare back, and the researchers moved around him, readying their equipment and taking their readings.  They touched him, measured things.  He shivered in fear.  He couldn’t see them.  He couldn’t see anything but the white tiles of the floor under him and his own sweat and blood and tears dripping down onto them.  “Please don’t do this.  Somebody help me.”

“Easy, Steven.”  That voice was familiar.  A comforting hand slid down his arm to rest on his shoulder.  Steve jerked but relaxed as a friendly face appeared to his left.  Doctor Erskine crouched beside him.  His salt and pepper hair was a mess.  He wore a brown suit and a white lab coat.  His glasses shone in the harsh lights, but his bearded face was calm and gentle and sad.  “Just relax.  I know you’re afraid.”

Those words were not at all comforting.  “Don’t make me do this,” Steve implored.  “Please.  I can’t.  I can’t!”

“I know,” Erskine softly said.  He frowned, his brown eyes teeming with compassion.  He was helpless and horrified but trying not to seem it.  “And I’m sorry.  This was not what I intended.  But it can’t be stopped now.  You have to go through with it.”  Steve arched his back, his mouth opening in a soundless cry as pain knifed up and down his spine.  The scientists were holding him steady, positioning the equipment, the needles that would fill his body with Lahey’s drug again, working and speaking amongst each other like he wasn’t there.  Like he was only a subject and not a person.  Like the man didn’t matter.  “The man does matter,” Erskine reminded.  His accent was thick and his voice was rough with emotion.  “The man always matters.  You know why you were chosen for this procedure.”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut.  “Because I can survive it,” he hoarsely answered.

“No,” Erskine said.  “Because you can overcome it.”

“I – I don’t know if I can…”

“You can.”  Erskine’s hand was warm and tender on his shoulder.  A friendly touch in a world turned cruel and cold and uncaring.  And his eyes were the same as they always had been.  Wise.  Compassionate.  Hopeful.  “You remember, Steven,” he said, “what you promised me.”

Steve could barely breathe.  “I remember,” he gasped.

“Stay a good man.  Promise me again.”

“I promise.”

“Good.  Now bite on this.  It’ll help with the pain.”  Erskine slid a guard in his mouth, a hard piece of plastic that his teeth immediately clamped around.  Steve fought to keep his breathing steady through his nose, but it was a losing battle.  Erskine watched him sadly a moment more.  Then he stood and his hand left Steve’s shoulder.  “Infusion in ten seconds.”

Every muscle in Steve’s body was tense with fear.  _Stay a good man_ , he thought.  It was a chant, over and over again.  _Stay a good man.  Stay a good man.  You’re Captain America.  You don’t quit.  You keep fighting.  You can overcome this.  Stay a good man.  Stay a good man. Keep fighting.  Keep–_

“Begin the infusion.”

The drug flooded him again.  Steve heard himself scream a muffled scream as the poison burned away all his thoughts save one.  Bucky had lied to him.  That one thought wasn’t that he needed to keep fighting.

It was that he hoped he died for good this time.

He didn’t.


	13. Chapter 13

Steve had been kidnapped two days ago.

 _Two days ago_.

All of SHIELD was involved in the search.  The massive organization had endless funds, resources, and manpower at its disposal, and it was employing all of that to the fullest extent.  The FBI, the NSA, and local police departments nationwide were aiding as well.  The details were kept secret, pared down to the minimal amount of information to produce an effective manhunt without jeopardizing the situation further.  SHIELD had enough pull and political influence to get it done without sharing sensitive data, like the fact they were searching for Captain America and why.  Rappaccini had rapidly become the most wanted criminal in the country.  Everything they knew about her was being propagated throughout law enforcement agencies from New York to Los Angeles.  Her face was known to every cop, agent, and military officer on duty across the United States.  Every airport and harbor was being monitored, and the Canadian and Mexican borders were under strict surveillance.  SHIELD’s influence stretched far and wide, and the World Security Council had extended the search with the help of its allies and NATO.  The number of places Rappaccini and AIM could hide was rapidly dwindling.

But they hadn’t found anything.  There was no sign of Steve or the woman who’d abducted him.  No evidence of a trail.  No hint of where AIM had taken him.  _Nothing._

Clint’s patience was dwindling, as well.  And his composure.  And his hope that this was going to turn out okay.  Every minute Steve spent as their prisoner was unbearable.  Every minute was one where they could be torturing him, twisting him, turning him to their own ambitions, experimenting on him further.  The mere thought of it was enough to drive Clint crazy.  He couldn’t stand to be still.  He couldn’t stand to wonder, to even consider the possibilities, to so much as think about it.  He left the helicarrier’s medical bay as soon as the doctors were looking the other way because lying there uselessly as he recovered from his close brush with death was damn excruciating.  There was no reason to be so cautious.  He felt _fine_.  Well, that wasn’t entirely true, if he was honest with himself.  His head was throbbing miserably like a jackhammer was driving into his skull and his stomach was twisted into knots and waves of exhaustion were leaving him hot and weak and sweating, but he was okay.  He’d already spent way too many hours unconscious, and then the last few he’d been trapped in a bed as the doctors rehydrated him and kept an eye on his vitals.  A concussion notwithstanding, the sedative with which he’d been injected had been potent enough to knock down a super soldier with enhanced metabolism; he was damn lucky to be alive, and he knew it.  Still, he wasn’t about to let his screwed up state slow him any more than it had.

He stepped onto the bridge and quickly made his way to the side where the techs were working.  Natasha stood there, speaking softly with Sitwell.  “Anything?” he asked as he walked down the short stairs.

Natasha turned to face him.  Her eyes shone briefly with dismay.  “You should be resting,” she admonished lightly.

“Like hell,” Clint answered.  “Have you found anything?”

She shared a frustrated glance with Sitwell, though whether it was frustration over Clint’s stubbornness or over the fruitlessness of their search he couldn’t say.  The other agent’s face hardened.  “Not a damn thing,” he said.  Sitwell usually coordinated ops like this, overseeing the gathering of intel and the deployment of resources.  It was his job to stay on top of the situation and make certain time and manpower were being allocated accordingly, to keep the agents in the field (and Fury) apprised of changes as soon as they happened.  The fact that he had nothing to show for his normally precise and exhaustive efforts was clearly bothering him something fierce.  Clint had rarely seen him this irritated.  Underneath his cool exterior, he was torqued up.  “No sign of Rappaccini.  We were able to lift a few images from the lobby surveillance cameras of some of the other men who attacked you down in the lab, but there’s been nothing on that front, either.  And no hits on Rogers.  AIM doesn’t want him found, and they’ve got the resources and know-how to keep us off their trail.”

“It makes sense,” one of the techs said unhappily.  They’d been working for almost two days straight without a break, chewing through data as it came onto the SHIELD mainframe.  Tempers and patience were wearing.  “Considering what he is now.”

 _So much for keeping this secret._   Clint supposed that became impossible the minute AIM had taken Steve.  This had exploded into so massive an operation that required the coordination of a huge number of people, and that tended to breed gossip.  When he thought about it, Steve’s privacy (God, that was a laughable thought at this point) being compromised had probably been inevitable the minute he had become embroiled in that hostage situation.  Once the media had gotten wind of what happened, it was only a matter of time before the agents (even the lesser ones) started putting things together.  The disaster at Lahey’s lab plus the disaster at Stark Tower plus Rogers being kidnapped plus this massive search effort could really only equal one thing.

“He’s a person,” Natasha coolly reminded the young woman, “and your superior officer.  I suggest you remember that and focus on your job, agent.”

The woman flushed with indignant embarrassment and turned back to her workstation.  They were still running the face traces on Rappaccini and Rogers, crunching through thousands of comparisons world-wide every second, but, again, they hadn’t found anything.  They had some of the most powerful computers in the world churning through this, but that wouldn’t matter a damn thing if Rappaccini had hidden Steve some place where SHIELD had no eyes and no ears.  Of course, there was another explanation.  _Someone could be sabotaging us_.  Their satellite feeds had been interrupted and compromised at least once already.  If AIM had its hands in SHIELD’s mainframe, they could be chasing their tails and never know it. 

Everybody was aware of that possibility.  The mood on the bridge was tense, and it wasn’t just because Captain America had been taken by the enemy.  By now most everyone knew Fury was hunting for double agents.  People were worried and uncertain and rightly so.  Clint couldn’t decide which was more disturbing.  He was frankly finding it more and more inconceivable that AIM could have infiltrated SHIELD to the extent necessary for Sterns to coordinate with them when he was so deep in the Fridge and for them to stay in front of and inhibit SHIELD’s efforts to find Steve.  It just wasn’t likely that _that_ amount of damage could have occurred, that so much of SHIELD could be infested with moles and rats, right under Fury’s nose without him noticing.  Fury was too good a leader and a spy to fail on such a grand scale.  But that left them with _no_ explanation as to how all of this had played out as it had.  Somebody had arranged for it to happen.  Somebody had leaked Steve’s location to AIM (how, he had no idea – _nobody_ aside from Fury and the Avengers had known about the containment lab in Sterling Forest).  Somebody had stopped SHIELD from tracking AIM.  Multiple somebodies acting together.  It was a hell of a conspiracy, and he felt like they were still in the middle of it, sinking in deep, dark water with no way to swim to the surface.  They didn’t even know which way the surface was.

“Where’s Fury?” he asked, shaking himself from his thoughts.

Natasha tipped her head toward the back of the bridge.  “In interrogation.  Stark managed to restore the satellite links, and when he did that, he was able to figure out who disrupted our connection.”

Clint turned to her sharply.  “When?  Somebody should have told me.”

“You needed to rest,” Natasha said again like that was enough to calm him.  Like that was enough to justify cutting him from the loop.  All it did was make him angrier.  “We don’t know anything yet.  They just brought him in from the Triskelion an hour ago.”

“Who is he?”

Sitwell handed Clint a tablet.  A personnel file was open, showing a SHIELD ID photo of a young man named Toby Dupree.  Quickly he looked through the information.  They’d recruited him from RPI a few years ago.  He was a telecommunications expert whose life consisted of writing tracking algorithms for performing IP address traces.  His file was squeaky clean; there were no records of previous suspect activities, no signs of aberrant behaviors, and no red flags from his superior officers.  By all accounts, he seemed to be good agent and a good kid.  He looked like a nobody.  “How is this guy involved?”

“We don’t know,” Sitwell answered, “but his fingerprints are all over the satellite hack.  I guess he didn’t anticipate that Stark would be helping because it wasn’t hard for him to find them once he got in there.”

This didn’t make sense.  It was random.  _But this whole thing has seemed random from the beginning._ Lahey’s random grant.  His random email to Banner.  His random contact with the mercenaries.That hostage situation in which Steve had randomly found himself.  AIM randomly knowing _exactly_ where to look for them.  _What the hell is this?_ “Did Dupree have any contact with Sterns?”

“Hill is still checking the records at the Fridge, but it doesn’t look like it,” Natasha said.  “Dupree was out there six months ago to help repair a faulty network switch.  But Sterns was in isolation, and none of the other agents working with Dupree remember anything out of the ordinary.  The server rooms are located in the top of the tower, thirty floors away from Sterns’ cell.  It doesn’t seem likely they would have crossed paths.”

“They had to have,” Clint said.

“Either that or Sterns has a network of allies stretching from his cell all the way through SHIELD,” Sitwell said.  He looked patently disgusted at the mere thought.  “Fury seems to be leaning toward that explanation.”

That didn’t satisfy Clint.  It didn’t satisfy anyone.  He handed Sitwell back the pad.  “Keep looking.”

“I am,” Sitwell responded tersely, snatching the tablet back.  He was a decent guy and a phenomenal agent.  Clint liked him well enough, but it was hard to tell right then if Sitwell was upset about Steve’s situation or if he was just pissed off his search wasn’t producing the results it needed to.  Being the backbone of situations like this came with huge responsibilities, and he probably had Fury breathing down his neck.  “Maybe if we get lucky Rogers’ll provide us with another highly televised scene of wanton destruction.  That’ll help speed things along.”

Clint bristled.  Truthfully, as much as he didn’t like it, part of him was hoping for the same thing.  He was hoping Steve laid waste to his abductors in some sort of telekinetic explosion.  With SHIELD watching the country so closely, they were bound to see it.  But the thought of Steve escaping wasn’t entirely comforting.  If he wasn’t in his right mind…  It would be catastrophic.  This situation was well and truly screwed up.  And Clint didn’t have the patience for Sitwell’s sarcasm.  “Don’t joke about it.  You didn’t see it.  You have no idea how serious this is.”

Now Sitwell glared.  He wasn’t usually petty or cruel, but he could be when he was stressed.  And he definitely seemed stressed.  “No, we don’t, because you failed to follow protocol–”

“Protocol,” Clint incredulously repeated.  “Is there a protocol for this?  I don’t seem to recall it in the field op manual.  I don’t think having your partner experimented on and turned into a weapon really falls under normal operating procedures.”  Natasha surreptitiously brushed her hand against Clint’s as she shifted to fold her arms across her chest.  It was an unspoken plea for him to keep his temper in check.

“You should have reported it,” Sitwell said.  The techs were starting to stare at them now as the argument escalated.  The sight of two senior agents bickering on the bridge was something of an odd occurrence.  “If you and Stark and Banner had come clean about what happened to Captain Rogers, we could have better contained this situation.  The Council can’t make informed decisions if our agents hide things from them.”

“Fury agreed with me.”

Sitwell flushed a little at that.  “Everybody’s too emotional about this.”  Clint heard what Sitwell didn’t say.  It was a prevalent mindset around SHIELD, one shared by Hill as well.  Fury was compromised when it came to the Avengers.It wasn’t clear whether it was due to his faith in his own initiative or actual care for the ramshackle group of superheroes he’d assembled to save the world, but whatever the cause was, his skewed perception of things, his protectiveness, was noticeable even by the lower level agents.  Nobody was brave enough to call him out on it.  At least, not directly.  “I know what happened to Captain Rogers was traumatic, but we wouldn’t be in this mess if he’d been in custody.”

“Guys, let’s not spin our wheels like this.  It gets us nothing,” Natasha said.

Clint didn’t stop.  Sitwell’s attitude was really rubbing him the wrong way.  “I doubt it would have mattered.  AIM went through a lot of trouble to make sure Rogers received Lahey’s drug.  I don’t think they would have done that, or any of this, if they hadn’t had a way to take him planned out in advance.”

“They could have tried,” Sitwell agreed, “but they wouldn’t have been able to kidnap him if he’d been under SHIELD protection.  I don’t care how powerful they are.”

Clint couldn’t take it anymore.  That sure as shit sounded like an accusation to him, and not just about failing to report and document Steve’s new powers to the World Security Council.  Some part of him knew he was letting his emotions get the best of him.  He was being overly sensitive because of how guilty he felt.  But it was too hard not to and he was too worn to muster his normal composure.  “Just do your job,” he snapped.  He turned and stalked back up the steps and out of the bridge. 

Natasha followed, lengthening her stride to catch up with him.  They headed down the hallway at a fast, agitated pace.  “Clint,” she started.

“Save it, Nat,” he snapped.  “I don’t want to hear it.  I just want to find him.  That’s it.”

“We will.”

He didn’t share her optimism, what little there was in her voice.  “Before or after they torture him or experiment on him or kill him?”  As bad as all that was, it wasn’t even the worst of the possibilities.

She wasn’t fazed by the bitter anger in his voice.  Or the fear.  And she wasn’t daunted.  “You either need to sit this out or get yourself together.  Now.”  Clint angrily averted his gaze.  Coming from her, that was more than a chastisement.  It was disappointment.  It was a warning.  Her voice softened at his pained expression.  “It wasn’t your fault.”

“The hell it wasn’t.”  They turned the corner and stopped in front of the lift.  Clint jabbed his thumb into the call button.  His shoulders were stiff with pain and his head was throbbing.  That didn’t compare to the dull ache in his chest.  It was an empty thing scrounging for something to fill it.  _Pull it together, Barton._ The elevator finally arrived and they stepped inside.  “Detention level,” Clint barked.

“Detention level confirmed,” the computer responded, and the elevator began to descend. 

Clint sagged and closed his eyes.  The quiet became painful and pressing.  Normally silence didn’t bother Clint, but this time it was one more thing he couldn’t suffer.  “He was scared,” he admitted softly.

“I know.”

“He asked me to make sure he never becomes a threat to us.  He asked me.  How can I do that now?”

“You can’t,” Natasha softly answered.  That hurt.  It hurt in a way that was raw and new.  He felt so goddamn useless and helpless.  And it wasn’t that his friendship with Steve was based on their mutual need for each other’s support.  Or protection.  Neither of them needed it.  Steve didn’t need someone to watch out for him.  He was more than capable of taking care of himself.  Sure they got their fair share of injuries in their line of work (though because Steve healed so fast that made it seem even more like he didn’t need help).  Of course they looked out for each other on missions, on the battlefield where one split second could be the difference between life and death.  And they took care of each other in other ways, silent and steadfast ways, easing injuries to hearts and souls without imposing or insisting.  Clint never _worried_ about Steve.  He never feared for him like this. 

But Steve had never been hurt like this before.  Steve had never been _taken_ from him before. 

He wanted to kill every one of the animals who’d done this to them.

Natasha glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.  She respected him far too much to dismiss his worries.  She cared for him too much to placate him with trite assurances.  “Cap’s strong,” she said.  This wasn’t empty solace.  It was truth, and the way she said it, softly and seriously without a speck of doubt in her even tone, was enough to remind him of that.  “You know that.”

The elevator reached its destination, and with a soft beep the doors opened.  The biometric scanners identified them both as they stepped out into the highly secure detention block.  The two guards on duty at the desk nodded to them.  “The Director is in room A3,” one of them said.  They continued along the gunmetal gray corridor.  Further down the way was the detention block, rows and rows of cells usually filled with criminals and terrorists and evil of the worst sort.  But they stopped well before the security checkpoint that led deeper into the bowels of helicarrier.

The interrogation rooms were along both walls.  They found the Fury in the last room and watched the scene before them through a large, one-way glass observation window.  The Director was looming over a chair that sat in the middle of the metallic box of a room.  A young man (Dupree, Clint assumed) was cowering in Fury’s shadow.  “I’m getting really tired of asking you the same questions, agent.”  Dupree was white-faced and shaking.  His face was coated in sweat and tears and he looked like he was about ready to wet his pants in terror.  “I keep asking, and you keep giving me the wrong answers.  Captain Rogers has been missing for two days.  You’re a smart kid, right.  A genius with computers.  A math whiz.  You know how many hours that is?”

It was obvious Fury was actually waiting for Dupree to answer.  It took the kid a minute to realize that.  “F-Forty-eight?”

“Forty-eight.  That’s a lot of time.  How many minutes, Agent Dupree?”

Dupree squeezed his eyes shut.  “Ah…  Um…  I–”

“How many minutes?” Fury asked again more harshly.

“Uh…  About twenty-eight hundred.  Twenty-eight-eighty!  Sir, I don’t–”

“You don’t what?  You’re not sure.  Well, then let me put this in perspective for you.  You aided in the abduction of a SHIELD officer.  Of an _Avenger._   And every _minute_ you spend stalling here is one less that I can use to find him.  If they kill him, those twenty-eight hundred minutes is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of time you’ll spend behind bars.  Am I making myself clear?”

Dupree winced and stammered.  “Sir, please, I don’t know anything about people kidnapping Captain Rogers or anyone else.  I don’t know anything.”

“I want to know how Sterns got in contact with you,” Fury demanded.  His tone was getting tighter and tighter, and his eye flashed in warning.

“I don’t know who that is!” Dupree said.  He was floundering.  He finally found it within himself to look up at Fury.  “Please, sir, I’m telling you the truth.”

“You can’t be, agent.  You know who Tony Stark is?”  Dupree’s eyes widened.  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he nervously swallowed.  He nodded.  “He traced _your_ hack of our satellite feed to _your_ workstation at the Triskelion.  I don’t know about you, but I tend to think Tony Stark is a tad bit smarter than you are.  What do you think?”  At that, Fury leaned down right in Dupree’s face.

“Yes, sir,” the agent said.

“So if he tells me that you did it, I’m inclined to believe him.  You know what that makes you?  A liar and an accomplice.”

“Sir, please!  I don’t remember doing that!  Maybe it came from my workstation, but it couldn’t have been me!”

Fury leaned back up and folded his arms over his chest.  “You were logged into the machine at the time.  Unless someone can fake your fingerprint scan, it had to be you.”

Dupree grimaced.  His eyes shone with teary recognition of the fact that he was in deep, deep shit.  “I honestly don’t remember!  You have to believe me!  I don’t remember doing anything like that!  And if I knew anything about where they took Captain America, I’d tell you.  Really, I would.  I swear!  You gotta believe me, Director!  I’ll do anything to prove it to you.  I’ll take a lie detector test.  Oh, God.  This is bad.  I didn’t do it.  I didn’t do it!”

Dupree completely lost it.  He buried his face in his hands, sobbing piteously and one step above hysterically.  Fury didn’t look pleased.  His face tightened in frustration for a moment before he clenched his jaw and walked out of the room.  He closed the door tightly behind him.

“Is he lying?” Natasha asked.  She stared at the weeping agent dispassionately.

Fury’s hard visage cracked just a bit as he stood beside his two senior agents.  Clint knew him well enough to see things that others would probably miss.  He was weary and burdened.  He was worried, too.  “I don’t think so,” the Director said.  He shook his head, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say.  “I think he honestly doesn’t remember.  The interrogators were at him another hour before I got here.  He hasn’t been trained to make it through that.  He would have cracked under the pressure.”

“And we’re sure he’s the one who did it?” Clint asked.  He appraised the junior agent himself.  The kid was totally innocuous, beside himself with horror and completely taken aback at being thrust into this situation.  Fury was proficient at reading people.  They all were.  Dupree hardly seemed the sort to be involved with something this huge and this dangerous.

“Stark was positive.  I’ve had the techs tearing apart his workstation to see if someone tampered with it to fake his biometrics.  There’s no sign of that.  He had to be the one,” Fury said.

“So he did it and he really doesn’t remember it,” Natasha surmised.  “Where does that leave us?”

“Where we were before.”  Fury’s angry scowl returned.  “Nowhere.”

Clint gritted his teeth.  His emotions were gaining ground on his control again, and he damn well knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself.  This was _torture_ , pure and simple.  “Sir, we have to do something.”

“What would you like me to do, Barton?” Fury hotly snapped.  His restraint broke.  “We have no leads.  We’ve been played.  AIM got their people mixed in with our people.  AIM _beat_ us.  And now they’ve tied our goddamn hands behind our backs.  They’ve had us right where they wanted us from the beginning.”

“Not us,” Clint argued.  “We’re not the ones who’re suffering.”

“You think I don’t know that?”  Fury’s face screwed up into a scowl that would have melted most men down to nothing.  Clint normally wouldn’t have been so bold or so tall in the face of that, but all he could think about was Steve, alone and in pain and terrified.  All he could picture was Steve bound to an examination table, being tested and tormented by faceless monsters.  He thought he could hear Steve screaming, just like he’d screamed down in Lahey’s lab.  And he thought he could hear Fury’s teeth cracking.  “You think I don’t know what we stand to lose?  You think I’m not afraid of what they could do to him?  The Council–”  He stopped and grimaced and looked away.  “I’m not giving up, but we’ve got nothing to go on.  They vanished, and they took the Cap with them.”

Hearing him say that was akin to admitting to defeat.  Clint wouldn’t let him do that.  “That’s not possible,” he said.  “There’s a trail.  We just haven’t found it yet.”

“If _we_ can’t find it, it’s not there to find,” Fury retorted.  He seemed disgusted with his own foul, pessimistic mood.  His stature slumped ever so slightly, and his glower loosened.  He drew a deep breath, rubbing his palm over the gleaming skin of his head.  “You shouldn’t be on your feet yet.  Go rest.  We’ll call you when we get something.”

“I can’t do that,” Clint answered.

“I need you at your best with your head on straight.  _This_ isn’t it, agent.”  It wasn’t said with heat, but it still stung.

Natasha shook her head, glancing between the two men and trying once again to stay calm as the waves of tension ebbed and flowed around her.  “Clint, he’s right,” she said softly.  Her voice was disarming, not demanding.  “You took a bad hit.  You’re not thinking clearly.”  She was kind enough not to elaborate on why that was.  “Like I said, you need to sit this out for a bit.”

He wasn’t going to listen to this nonsense.  He was fine.  “What about Stark and Banner?”

Fury sighed.  “They’ve gone back to New York,” he said, “to run things their own way, as Stark so nicely put it.”  He didn’t look at all pleased.  “They took all the data we have on Rogers’ condition.  Stark’s convinced there’s a cure.  Supposedly they’re working on it.”

“A cure,” Clint said.  “And what if there isn’t one?”

“We better hope there is.  The Council is prepared to issue orders that I don’t want to have to follow.”

That was too disturbing to think about.  He knew Fury wasn’t exaggerating.  He didn’t want to ask what those orders could be.  He didn’t want an elaboration or an explanation.  He wanted to find Steve and fix this.  And if Tony and Bruce could come up with some way to strengthen the super soldier serum and reverse Lahey’s drug…  _First things first._   “Sir, I want permission to go question Sterns.”  Fury wasn’t happy with that idea.  Clint could immediately tell.  But the Director didn’t outright deny his request, so he went on.  “He’s behind this.  He has to be.”  After he’d awoken in the infirmary earlier that afternoon, Natasha had come to debrief him on Bruce’s meeting with Sterns.  Since then Sterns had been the only person on whom he could focus, the only aspect of this he _knew_ was hard and fast and definitely undeniable.  Sterns had planned this.  Sterns was behind what Lahey had done and Steve’s kidnapping.  “He has to be this Leader that Rappaccini and the others are following.”

“That’s probably true,” Fury conceded, “but if he is, he’s too dangerous to screw around with.  Somehow he got wind of Rogers’ location and fed that to the kidnappers.  That intel _had_ to come from here.  He’s got sources deep in SHIELD, and he’s communicating with them in a way we can’t detect.  And he’s doing it fast.  I don’t want to accidentally feed him greater ammunition until we plug the leaks.”

 _If it’s that simple._   “Honestly, sir, I don’t see how this could get worse.  If Sterns is the Leader, then we have all the answers we need right in our hands.  He’s our only chance to get information at this point.  Let us interrogate him.  It’s all we’ve got.”

Fury glanced to Natasha, who stood at Clint’s side.  Her face was impassive and her jaw was set in determination.  “We don’t have much to lose,” she agreed.  “We might even be able to use him as some sort of bartering chip.  If he’s leading them, they may want him out.”

“At the very least, we need to try,” Clint said.  “We don’t have a choice anymore.  He’s been in control from the beginning, and we have to take that back.  No kid gloves.  No negotiations.”  Fury watched him with a knowing, dark glimmer in his eye.  Clint didn’t back down.  He’d done some hard-core things during his career as a hired killer and as a SHIELD agent.  He’d been involved with coercing prisoners, with lying and manipulating and even some less than moral approaches to extracting confessions and information.  It wasn’t something he enjoyed or condoned, but it was a necessary evil.  He was willing to dirty his hands and sully his conscience to help Steve, a million times over if he had to.  He was willing to do whatever it took _._ “And now we’ll go in knowing what we’re dealing with.”

The SHIELD Director was wary.  Honestly, it was with good reason.  Sterns _had_ been playing them from the get-go, and this harsh fact wasn’t something to be brushed aside.  The inclination to do something, _anything_ , was so strong, to simply act because standing still and waiting was too painful and intolerable.  That sort of impulsivity led to mistakes, especially when the threat they faced was surrounded with so many unknowns and so few facts.  However, Natasha was right.  They had nothing to lose.  Sterns had already beaten them.  Sterns had already taken Steve.

Fury sighed.  His eye narrowed.  “Go,” he said to the two of them.  “Go squeeze the bastard until he sings.”

* * *

Clint hated the Fridge.  He’d only been there a few times during his career, but every time he had the opportunity to frequent SHIELD’s inner stronghold for containing the most uncontainable of threats, he felt uncomfortable.  He didn’t know much about the things that found their way here.  He wasn’t an expert on the science behind these 084s and weapons and biological aberrations.  He was, however, an expert on security, and in his opinion, storing so many highly dangerous and unpredictable forces together in a single place was downright stupid.

Unfortunately, the World Security Council didn’t agree with him.  And it was neither here nor there really as he and Romanoff descended down the tower toward Sterns’ cell.  Sterns had been moved from his customary location to a detention block on the absolute lowest level of the Fridge.  This was reserved for the most dangerous of specimens, whose mere existence posed an unimaginable threat to mankind.  Hill and a small company of armed guards were there to greet them when the elevator stopped and the doors opened.  “You sure you want to do this, Barton?  He’s done nothing but jerk us around since the Cap was kidnapped.”

“We can’t waste any more time,” Clint said firmly as their group walked down the corridor.  It was long and narrow and bereft of doors.  There was nothing down here save the cells, and there weren’t that many.  Only four, each at one of the corners of the base of the tower.  Each was equipped with its own guard regiment and independent security and power systems.  Hill led them toward Sterns’ cell.  “He’s the best shot we have at finding Steve.”

Hill didn’t look convinced.  “Sterns has been in complete isolation for the last two days.  Nobody besides me has been in to see him.  Nobody has rotated out.  Even his food is being delivered robotically.  He can’t possibly know where Rogers is.”

Logically that was true.  But despite the fact that this whole nightmare had been borne of science, Clint was starting to think there was more magic involved than anyone would care to admit.  He had a stupid memory then of one of his grade school science teachers.  Old Mr. Terrence who taught seventh grade chemistry and physics.  He had a whole host of experiments he used to demonstrate for his class, things like bending water with static electricity and building electro-magnets from nails and paper clips and making clouds inside of plastic bottles.  It had all been gimmicky nonsense to try and keep his students interested.  He used to have a saying about science, though, about it being a body of laws to explain the understandable and just a touch of magic to explain the phenomenal.  Clint had never been much of a student; when he and his brother had run away from the orphanage in which they’d ended up after their parents’ deaths, he’d quit school and quit thinking about _why_ things worked and focused instead on _how_ things could be used to get the job done.  In his uneducated opinion, magic seemed about as good an explanation for everything right now as anything else.

And he had no explanation for how Sterns knew where Steve was.  He was just certain the son of a bitch knew.

Hill was stiff and wary.  “I’m the only one who has talked to him.  He’s been… giddy.  Like I said, jerking us around.  He won’t answer questions, not about Rogers or his moles or anything else.  I’m not disagreeing that he might know something, but even if he does, he’s crazy.  It’s like trying to squeeze water out of a rock.”

Natasha shared a look with Clint.  She was Black Widow.  Extracting information was a specialty of hers.  The first time she’d spoken with Sterns, they’d been wary and uncertain of what was happening.  Now they knew he was responsible for what had happened to Steve, so there would be no hesitation.  She had gotten some of the world’s worst terrorists and villains to spill their guts.  She’d even managed to get _Loki_ to talk.  Clint was confident that if there was something to be learned, she could learn it.

And he wouldn’t hold back from helping.

They reached the end of the walkway.  More guards waited.  They were firm and stoic, but Clint could see they were tired.  If they weren’t rotating out to other details in shifts as Hill had said, this poor group had been on the job without much of a break for two days.  But their downtime wasn’t worth the risk that one of them could take information out on Sterns’ behalf.  Hill nodded to them.  The company commander opened the tightly sealed door, revealing another, shorter corridor that was completely white and overly bright.  The three agents walked down this hallway, the door closing and resealing behind them.  At the end there was another door.  Through that was a white cell, and Sterns was inside.

Clint had never seen him before.  He’d analyzed SHIELD’s file on him during the flight over from the helicarrier, but the picture of him really didn’t do the massive tumor growing out of the side of his head justice.  He was lying on his cot, hands laced beneath what remained of his hair, feet crossed at the ankles.  He wasn’t sleeping, even though his eyes were closed.  “Doctor Sterns, we’d like to speak with you,” Hill said after closing the door behind them.  Her voice was teeming with forced politeness and patience.

Sterns did and said nothing.  Clint watched him, feeling increasingly on edge.  He dropped his hand to the gun holstered on his thigh.  Natasha stood beside him, her arms folded across her chest and all her weight on her left leg.  Hill was next to her, her arms clasped behind her back.  She looked annoyed and just a bit worried.  “Doctor Sterns.”

The man still didn’t move.  Clint lost his temper.  “We don’t have time for this bullshit,” he snapped.  He was across the room in one step.  He balled his fists in Sterns’ gray jumpsuit and yanked him from the cot.  Sterns was small and sort of spindly, so tossing him across the room and into the opposite wall was nothing.

Sterns hit hard and slumped to the floor.  He gasped.  “Easy on my head, Agent Barton.  That’s no way to treat someone whose cooperation you need.”

Clint’s chest tightened.  He looked down on the crumpled man.  “How the hell do you know who I am?”

Sterns smiled.  His teeth weren’t straight, and with that pulsing mass on his head, he looked every bit like some sort of crazy master villain.  It was revolting.  “I know a lot of things,” he said.  He rolled away from the wall with a grunt.  “I’d like to stand up now, if you don’t mind.”

“Answer my goddamn question,” Clint warned.  “How do you know me?”

Sterns clambered to his feet like a lamed duck.  He sniffed and looked long-suffering.  “I keep explaining to Agent Hill that I know things.  For some reason she insists on not believing me.”

“Because it’s impossible,” Hill returned coldly.  She hadn’t moved from her spot, and she looked uncaringly down on Sterns.  “I prefer to deal in truths, Doctor.  And the truth is we _know_ you know where Captain Rogers is.”

Sterns had the audacity to look surprised.  “And you think _I_ had something to do with that?  I’ve been locked up in here, courtesy of you, since the good Captain’s kidnapping.  Since before his kidnapping.  Isn’t that right?  How in the world could–”

Clint’s fingers curled in Sterns’ clothes and yanked him up.  He slammed the slighter man to the wall and held him there, viciously pushing him into the unforgiving surface.  “I’m getting really tired of you sick bastards screwing around with us,” he hissed.  There was not a speck of fear in Sterns’ face.  Clint had threatened some vile individuals in his time, and he’d never seen someone so uncaring, even _amused_ , in the face of it.  Giddy, like Hill had said.  That only made him angrier.  “Where’s Rogers?  You can’t tell me that your AIM lackeys didn’t tell you where they took him.  _Where is he?_ ”

Sterns smiled grotesquely.  “Calm down, Agent Barton.  I realize this gets under your skin, but you really need to reel in your temper.”

Clint yanked him forward and then slammed him back into the wall.  “Tell me where he is,” he snarled, “or I’ll do the world a favor and end you.”

“You won’t,” Sterns calmly returned.  “This situation has played out in my head a million times over.  I’m a master at recognizing patterns, you know.  You want to know the odds of you reaching for your gun and putting a bullet in my brain?  They’re surprisingly low.”  That took Clint aback slightly, and his surprise breached his scowl.  “I would have thought they’d be higher, but your friendship with Rogers has tempered your more violent tendencies.”

 _What?_   Cold fear washed over Clint in a nauseating wave.  It settled like an icy weight in the pit of his stomach, and he pulled back, his eyes roving the ugly face in front of him in shock.  “There’s no way you could know…”

“I know.”  Sterns smiled.

“Clint,” Natasha said.  She put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.  “Let him go.  He’s screwing with you.”

“Listen to her,” Sterns advised.  “She’s always been a stabilizing force.”

Clint’s fingers loosened in their crushing hold of their own accord.  He shoved Sterns lightly back into the wall and took a step away.  _It’s bullshit,_ he made himself think.  _It’s not real.  He’s playing you.  Your emotions are betraying you._ It couldn’t be real.  Flying off the handle was telling of how worried he was, and how worried he was was telling of his close friendship with Steve.  Sterns was a cruel bastard trying to dig into him.  _That’s it._

But that wasn’t it.  “I can understand why you’re upset, though.  I mean, I’ve never had a friend like you have in him.  Really.  Somebody to stand by you through thick and thin.  Somebody to remind you don’t have to go it alone.”  Clint’s eyes widened.  “I have to say I’m a tad jealous of that.  Someone who stands with you, who grounds you.  Who makes you better.  What was it, agent?  That mission outside of Kabul?  When he stopped you from killing those terrorists?”

_It’s not possible._

Sterns’ eyes flashed like he _knew_ he had hit a nerve.  He’d sunk his claws deep into Clint’s heart.  “It’s a good thing Rogers was there to get you out of that.  You were on the edge, and if he hadn’t been there to pull you back…  It must really kill you that he’s on the edge now, and you can’t do the same for him.  He’s in trouble, and you can’t save him.  You can’t protect him.”

This was wrong.  It couldn’t be.  What had happened on that mission…  No one knew about it.  The STRIKE Team hadn’t seen Steve stop him.  Fury wasn’t aware of the details.  Out of respect for Clint, Steve had left it out of his report.  Clint had done the same.  There were no records of it.  _No one_ knew about it.  Clint had never even met Sterns before, and he was fairly certain Steve hadn’t, either.  There was no way this bastard could have known!  He felt fundamentally betrayed.  Fundamentally exposed.

Sterns was still smiling.  It was grotesque.  “You want to hit me, Agent Barton?  You want to beat the information out of me?  You think that will get you what you want?  I can see the rage and pain boiling inside of you.  You want to take it out on me?  Would that make you feel better?”  He smirked.  “It’s not healthy to keep all of that inside of you.  Rogers should be testament to that.  Tear down those defenses he’s so proficient at building, and all that pain destroys you.”

“Shut up!” Natasha snapped.  “Clint, get out of here.”

Clint didn’t leave.  And Sterns didn’t shut up.  He didn’t stop. “You should listen to her, Agent Barton.  If I start talking about your friend, you might not like what you hear.  What do you think they’re doing to him?  I call it science, but you’ll probably think it’s dehumanization.  You know some things about that, don’t you?  You know how it is.  Reducing a man to nothing.  Leveling every bit of his mind until everything good is dead.  Tearing him down until only his rage remains.”

That was it.  Clint snapped.  He belted the bastard across the face.  “Barton!  Stop!  Stop now!” Hill shouted. “That’s an order!”

  _It’s not worth it._   He could almost hear Steve’s voice in his head.  _Don’t.  It’s not worth it._   Sterns was groaning against the wall.  Blood was oozing from his nose.  Clint loomed over him, his hand balled into a fist and raised in preparation to hit him again, but he didn’t.  Steve’s voice cut through his rage.  _Don’t do it._

“Clint, you need to leave.”  Natasha’s calm words resounded in the tense silence that followed.  He turned around and looked at her.  Her face was angry, though not at him, and stern.  He stared at her like he didn’t understand.  Part of him didn’t.

“Clint.”  It was Hill now.  She was watching him sadly, like she knew how badly compromised he was.  “Go.  We’ll take care of this.”

Sterns wiped at his face.  He stared up at Clint, unfazed.  Clint stared back, equally so.  Then he turned and left.

Outside in the hallway, Clint swore loudly.  It was too much.  Too damn much.  He paced liked a caged animal, furious with the whole world and everything that had led to this moment.  Furious with himself.  He’d been a goddamn moron to think that he had the emotional fortitude to deal with this.  Normally he was so calm, so collected, so emotionless.  This work _required_ it.  And ever since Steve had been bound to that table in Lahey’s lab, he’d been compromised.  He hadn’t realized he’d gotten so close to Rogers, so reliant on his friendship.  He should be better than this, stronger than this.  He couldn’t let his guilt eat at him like it was.  Steve needed him.  _Level heads._   Steve’s voice again.  _Stay calm._

He had to get himself together.

Long minutes passed in complete silence.  A few deep breaths calmed him, easing the fire of his anger.  A few more grounded him, and his heart stopped pounding.  And a few more after that he felt with it enough to open his eyes and go back in.

However, he paused before his hand reached the scanners alongside the windowless door.  Something irked him, and it wasn’t just that Sterns somehow knew things about him and about Steve that there was no way he could have known.  Sterns was a genius; he had to be to be a colleague of Banner’s, this complicated plot he’d crafted notwithstanding.  And he was obviously in control.  Why provoke Clint like he had?  Sure the bastard seemed the type who liked to gloat and dig and rip at wounds just for cruelty’s sake, but there was more to this than that.  Sterns knew that Natasha would stop him.  Sterns _knew_ Natasha would tell him to leave.

_Shit._

He went to open the door, but it swung wide before he could.  Hill came out with her gun drawn.  Her gun drawn and pointed at _him._   And Natasha followed.  Hers was aimed at him as well.  “What’s going on?” Clint asked, immediately backpedaling.  His blood turned to ice at their empty expressions.  _Oh, God.  What the hell?  What’s happening?_ “Maria… what is this?”

Before Hill said anything, Sterns appeared behind the two agents.  He was flanked by them.  They were _protecting_ him.  Clint’s mind screeched to a halt with that realization.  “Drop your weapon, Agent Barton.”

Clint was too shocked and alarmed to move.  And then he felt something _odd_.  Something invading his brain, something forceful and unpleasant and decidedly not _him_ , and a hot rush of resistance came over him.  This thing in his head pushed and pushed, foreign and alien, and every thought it touched, every feeling, was contaminated by someone else’s presence.  Clint knew what it was.  He knew what this felt like.  _Loki._

And as fast as it came, it was gone.  Clint gasped and staggered, bringing a shaking hand to his forehead.  The world came back to him in an explosion of mind-wracking sight and sound, and he found himself back in that white corridor with two guns pointed at him.  Sterns shook his head in disappointment.  “Lame.  I hate it when I’m right,” he said.  “I can’t maintain control over the three of you at the same time.  I’d hoped I could.  Oh, well.  The old-fashioned way then.”

Natasha came closer, shoving her gun in Clint’s face, while she reached for the weapon in his holster.  She yanked that away as he reeled in surprise.  Clint gasped, struggling past sudden nausea and weakness in his limbs, and looked to his long-time partner.  “Nat,” he called.  “Nat, snap out of it!”

“She can’t,” Sterns explained simply.  “She can’t even hear you.  Neither of them can.”  The hideous man stepped between his two newfound bodyguards and came closer to Clint.  “I have to admit that I’m a tad disappointed in you.  I had expected you to come earlier.  I was planning on it.”

This was all a bit much to take.  Clint couldn’t wrap his head around it.  Vaguely he realized this explained a lot.  How Sterns was coordinating his plot from deep within the Fridge.  If he could control minds…  He could make anyone do anything.  His reach went far into SHIELD and beyond it.  Subtle thoughts.  A gentle push here and there.  Moles?  Leaks?  Unfortunate techs and guards and agents within Sterns’ reach that had been coerced and controlled into doing his dirty work.  He had had their own agents plant evidence to get SHIELD onto Lahey’s trail and setup Steve and Bruce’s meeting with Lahey.  He had had their own people interact with AIM outside to arrange for Steve’s kidnapping.  He had forced others to fulfill his whims and act according to his ambitions.  The seemingly contrived randomness of it all had been just that: contrived.  And if that tech who’d cut the satellite feeds was telling the truth, his victims, his _tools_ , never even remembered what it was they’d done.  It was impossible to trace.  It was brilliant.

Sterns could alter the world as he saw fit, and no one was any the wiser that he was even doing it.

 _Oh, shit._ “You son of a bitch,” he hissed.

Sterns smiled a toothy, condescending smile.  “So now you see the truth,” he said.  “There are no coincidences.  My own powers are pretty remarkable, aren’t they?  And it’s not just supplanting the will of others.  I can look into a thought here, a memory there, and learn all sorts of things that can prove useful.  Like the location of certain hidden labs, plucked right out of your partner’s pretty head when she came earlier with Bruce.  All too easy, really.”

Clint’s temper frayed.  If it weren’t for the guns in his face, he would have launched himself at Sterns.  The guy was a skinny, weak thing.  Clint could kill him like it was nothing.  “You goddamn son of a bitch!”

“Easy.  What would upset you more?  Getting shot by Agent Romanoff?  Or knowing that she’ll have to live with the guilt of shooting you?  If you’ll even be able to make yourself hurt either of them.  Duty dictates you should, but I can tell you’re not willing to.  Still, even though I can usually figure out the future with high accuracy, emotional outcomes like that are harder to predict.  Patterns in emotions are much harder to detect and much less stable.”  Sterns gestured to the corridor.   “Now, ladies, I think we should be going.”

Hill leveled her gun at him, and Natasha came forward and grabbed his arm and pushed him toward the lift.   “Put your hands on your head,” she ordered.  The fact that he was being used _again_ like this was infuriating to say the least, but he didn’t dare fight.  He knew he was beat.  He couldn’t take them both, not when he was unarmed and unwilling to hurt them.  He highly doubted they would exhibit the same restraint.  The thought of being shot and killed by either of them but particularly Natasha was disturbing to the say the least.  _Damn it,_ he thought in frustration.  Sterns was going to escape, and he was wielding SHIELD against itself.

They reached the first door.  On the other side a company of soldiers was waiting for them.  “Quiet now, Agent Barton,” Sterns ordered.  Hill pressed her hand to the scanner, and computer verified her with a chirp.  The door slid open.

Natasha moved like lightning.  There was no hesitation, no doubt, and her gun fired in rapid succession.  The men fell.  Hill kept her gun at Clint’s temple as Natasha dispensed with the soldiers.  When her clip ran dry, she charged, springing forward with her feet and fists flying.  Bodies slammed into the walls of the narrow corridor.  Rifles cracked and bullets slammed into the floor and ceiling.  One of the men flung himself toward a panel on the wall, slamming his hand to it.  An alarm began to wail, and the corridor was doused in red.  Hill’s jaw tightened and her eyes flashed as she turned the gun on the soldier by the panel.  One shot killed him.

Clint didn’t waste a second.  He attacked Hill, driving his elbow into her midriff.  He grabbed the hand that held the gun as she crumpled, twisting and squeezing to force her to drop it.  She did with a grunt of anger, rounding on him with a kick that he barely avoided.  Clint dropped to the side and rolled, reaching for the fallen weapon.  Before he could get to it, she slammed her boot down on his fingers.  He howled but didn’t stop, grabbing her ankle with his other hand and yanking her off balance.  She fell, and he grabbed the gun.

Natasha kicked it from his hand.  Her next strike went across his jaw, aggravating his already concussed head as he slammed into the wall beside him.  His teeth clacked together and warm blood filled his mouth.  He was dazed and weakened, everything spinning as a white blur around his head.  When he recovered enough to focus and blink the tears from his eyes, Natasha was staring down at him, her gun to his temple.  Her face was emotionless.  Her eyes were dead.  Her finger was poised on the trigger.

“Don’t,” warned Sterns as he came closer.  “We may need him at the top.”

“This is Deputy Director Maria Hill,” Hill called from beside the control panel.  Blood was splatted over the shining black surface and the white wall beside it.  Her hair was mussed and her face was bruised.  “Cancel alarm.”

“Alarm cannot be canceled,” the computer returned.  “Authorization is required from Director Fury.”

Clint felt just the slightest bit vindicated that they had thwarted Sterns this time instead of the other way around.  He looked at Sterns, who didn’t seem terribly concerned, and his moment of relief instantly faded.  “Let’s move.”

Natasha grabbed Clint by his arm and hauled him to his feet.  Both she and Hill had their guns on him again as they pushed and prodded him quickly down the rest of the hallway.  All of the soldiers lay dead or unconscious.  At the end, the elevator was waiting for them.

They roughly pushed him inside.  “On your knees,” Hill ordered.  “Hands back on your head.”

Clint had no choice but to comply.  The lift was spinning as his head throbbed.  He was having an increasingly difficult time staying focused, but the muzzle of each gun was sharp and distinct against the back of his head.  The elevator ascended quickly, tearing past the many floors of the Fridge on its way to the top.  About thirty seconds passed before the power was cut.

Emergency lights flooded on inside the small elevator car.  Clint didn’t move, didn’t even turn to Maria and Natasha behind him.  He kept his eyes firmly on the stainless steel door in front of him.  His heart was thundering in straining hope, sweat coating his face and the small hairs on the back of his neck and arms prickling.  “Just hold on a minute,” Sterns said.  “Hopefully the young woman in charge of getting the power back on remembers to do her job.  She was a tad more resilient to my influence than most of the others.”

“So that’s what you call it?  Influence?  Sounds like screwing around in someone’s head.”

“You would know, Agent Barton.  You’ve been there.”  Clint stiffened.  “Unfortunately my commands are a little more limited than that.  I can manage some fairly weak imprints, like cut a satellite feed or turn the power back on, without direct contact and at a greater distance.  Getting my directives to stick in their minds was tougher, but I taught myself to dig down into the subconscious, to bury things deep until the right time emerged.”

As Clint suspected, Sterns was all too eager to flaunt his abilities.  His gloating before hadn’t just been part of his plan.  Maybe he could eke out some information.  It was pretty much all he had left.  “Like a sleeper agent,” he offered.

“Good analogy.  Something like this with sustained subservience to my wishes requires close proximity and direct contact,” Sterns explained, “and it’s a tad taxing.  And the harder the will is to bend, the harder it is for me to do it, which makes sense.  But I’ve had practice.”

“Yeah,” Clint muttered.  _You sick bastard._

“I’m rather hoping that your friend will be reduced to a blank slate by Lahey’s drug by the time I get there,” Sterns admitted.  Clint jerked and looked behind him, unable to stop his reaction.  Sterns appraised him as though he were a simpleton.  “Oh, come on now.  You didn’t figure out that that was what this was all about?  I even told Bruce.  I told him, but no one listened.  It’s not about stopping Rogers or fixing him or replicating the procedures that made him.  Science is one thing, and there have certainly been those along the way here who’ve been obsessed with these serums and recreating them.  But science is nothing compared to power.  This has never been about science.  You gotta work with what you have.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Captain America is indomitable.  But Steve Rogers is only a man, and I’m thinking there isn’t going to be much left of him when I arrive.  Hopefully just an angry, sick kid from Brooklyn praying for something to ease his suffering.  When I get my hands in there, I’ll teach him to find a lot of relief in hurting other people.  There won’t be much of his will left to stop me.”

 _No.  No!_   Clint floundered.  He couldn’t think.  He couldn’t even breathe.  Sterns tipped his head slightly.  “Well, being late will give dear Monica more time to do her work.  You know, crush the super soldier serum down into submission and ensure the supremacy of Lahey’s drug.”  The scientist looked down on him.  “I know what you’re going to say, agent.  I can hear it in my head already like you’ve already said it.  Some blather about me not winning and not getting away with this and that Rogers won’t bend and blah blah blah.  I will and I will and he will.  I’ve never met anyone whose mind I haven’t been able to control.  Oh, great.  There’s the power!”  The lights blasted over them and the elevator jolted back into motion.  Sterns gave a dopey, relieved grin.  It was all fake.  “I was getting kinda worried there for a second.”

Clint didn’t know what to say.  There was nothing.  _Nothing_.  The pain in his chest was brutal.  His stomach was twisted so miserably tight.  He was terrified.  “Maybe I shouldn’t have spilled the beans.  You know, cracked under the pressure,” Sterns said with fake worry lacing his tone.  “Did you manipulate me into confessing?  Oh, shoot.  My bad.”  He actually laughed.  “You can’t stop my plan.  You think I won’t get away with this?  I’ve already gotten away with it.  I got away with it years ago when I first started planning it.  When Lahey first contacted me about his research.  The odds of it all, of Captain America being found and thawed, of the Hulk joining the Avengers Initiative, of the two of them meeting and forming a tentative enough friendship to lead to enough trust for the incident at Lahey’s lab to occur _exactly_ as it did…  They were pretty high.  You SHIELD people are morons.  You lock a man of my intelligence away with limitless time to _think_.  Given what Banner’s blood did to me…  You gave me all the tools I needed to become the most powerful man in history.”

The elevator softly beeped.  “And here we are.  Girls, if you wouldn’t mind getting Agent Barton out in front like a proper hostage situation.  Just in case there are men with guns.”

Clint gritted his teeth as he was yanked to his feet.  The doors opened and Natasha pushed him out.  He staggered dizzily, the concussion and shock to his system inhibiting him further.  Sure enough there were a dozen soldiers waiting for them.  Natasha shoved him between the guards and Sterns like a human shield.  “Drop your weapons and stand down,” Hill ordered.

The soldiers were dumb-struck, their faces fracturing in alarm as they darted questioning glances at each other.  Their rifles wavered.  Clint held his body taut, trying to drag his feet as much as possible as he was hauled past the men and to the doors.  “Stand aside,” Hill commanded again.  “Move!”

“What is this, ma’am?” asked one of the men.  He looked totally lost.  Clint didn’t know if he wanted them to shoot or simply surrender.  At this point the situation was so intractable he’d lost sight of the best course.  “The Fridge is in lockdown.”

“Not anymore,” Sterns sing-songed.  “Go ahead, ladies.  Do your thing.”

“Nat!  Nat, no!” Clint cried, but it made no difference.  He winced as the gun left his head and pointed at the lead soldier.  Hill fired as well, hitting another man in the shoulder.  The men were taken by surprise (why wouldn’t they be?) as the two senior agents unceremoniously took them out.  The gunfight lasted only a second or two, and in the end, the company of guards was reduced to a moaning, bleeding pile on the floor.

They were outside a second later.  The quinjet was ahead.  Hill sprinted to it, running inside to prep the aircraft for flight.  Natasha shoved Clint to his knees.  He chanced looking up at her.  “Natasha, please…  Listen to me.  _Please._ ”

“You’re wasting your breath,” Sterns said with a sad shake of his head.

Clint ignored him.  “I know you can hear me,” he said.  “I know you.  You have to fight!  Don’t listen to him!”

Natasha looked right at him, but her eyes didn’t _see_ him.  She was gone from them.  Imprisoned inside herself.  A tool in this man’s arsenal.  A goddamn weapon in this man’s war.  “Do you want to me to kill him, sir?” she calmly asked.  The gun was still at the side of Clint’s head, and her finger was still ready on the trigger.

“No,” Sterns answered.  He pursed his lips slightly and shrugged.  “I lied a little.  It’s not only about power.  I’m scientist at heart.  This is more interesting with you in it, Agent Barton.  It’ll be a really compelling field test if I can control Rogers enough for him to murder a man he cares for like his own brother.  Like I said, those emotional outcomes?  Harder to predict.” 

Desperation ripped through him as the wind tore around them.  “What about Hill and Romanoff?  You can’t–”

“Can and will.  Like I said, you gotta work with what you have.  Besides, they’re just nice to look at.  Alright, Agent Romanoff.  Off we go.  Thanks for bringing me my way out, sir.”  The sick bastard actually saluted him.

Sterns and Natasha were across the landing pad in a matter of seconds.  Natasha’s aim never shifted, never wavered, and her glare never softened with recognition or realization.  They disappeared up the ramp, and before Clint even climbed to his feet, the jet was hovering off the pad.  It shot off through the sky.

“God damn it,” Clint whispered in utter horror.    He’d walked right into a trap.  Again.  And he was furious with himself.  “God damn it!”  He pushed himself to his feet before staggering as fast as he could back inside the Fridge to call Fury and get all of SHIELD tracking that jet.  He knew it wouldn’t matter.  Natasha and Maria would know how to hide, how to escape detection.  How to get off the grid.

And Sterns would be counting on that.

They’d _never_ catch him now.

The Leader was right.  He was going to win.  He was going to get away with it.   And Steve…  _Please somebody help him.  Please.  Protect him because I can’t._


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** My science is all fabricated by me. So I make no claims to its accuracy :-). Please read and enjoy!

Bruce was ashamed to admit it, but there’d been a time (about a month in fact) where he’d been madly in love with Monica Rappaccini.  Of course, he’d been young and foolish and naïve at the time.  He’d been so thrilled to go to school and get out from under the hell of his childhood that everything and everyone had seemed perfect, that the world had been bright and vast and teeming with opportunities.  And sure he’d had girlfriends in high school, but he’d never truly hit it off with them, mostly because his level of intellect scared most normal people away.  He wasn’t being arrogant thinking that because it was true; he intimated a lot of people at home, and it was extremely difficult to romance a girl who couldn’t think on his level.  Monica had been the first one to really understand him, both scientifically and emotionally.  She was a gifted biochemist, perhaps even more knowledgeable than he was which was saying quite a lot, and she’d been eager to learn and explore.  The summer she’d spent at Desert State had been amazing.  They’d worked together, slept together, spent every waking moment together pouring over data from their experiments and studying and talking.  At the time, he’d thought they were perfect complements.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.  He’d started to realize toward the end of the summer when he’d introduced her to a few of his friends that she was extremely competitive.  Driven and ambitious and judgmental.  Hard-core even for him, and he knew he could be ambitious and judgmental himself.  She’d gone back to Padua when the summer had ended, and he’d started his senior year in New Mexico.  Their correspondence after that had been strange, to say the least.  She’d always been intense (obsessed if he was honest with himself) about scientific perfection, but the letters she’d written him in the following months had been plain _weird_ , shifting from data and theories to politics and philosophy.  Eventually she started advocating for revolutionary and even anarchist views, including the dissolution of all government and the use of science to empower only scientists.  Decisions about scientific endeavors and discoveries should not be made by policy-makers, who were themselves corrupted and motivated by ends other than the pursuit of knowledge.  Bruce had been fairly alarmed, and he should have cut it off completely with her.  But she was brilliant, and Bruce had wanted her input on a few projects on which he’d been working at the time.  And she still excited him.  The prospect of her and her collaboration had kept him interested, and he tried to rationalize her mounting insanity to account for that.  They’d called each other a couple of times during the school year, and every time she’d been more and more intense and less and less grounded in reality.  The next summer, he’d traveled to Italy at her behest to visit her.  He’d spotted her organizing some sort of protest among the researchers, claiming the University of Padua and the Italian government were inhibiting scientific freedoms.  That was the point where he’d said to hell with her help, and he’d gone back to the States without ever seeing her.  He hadn’t talked to her or seen her or really thought about her since.

That had been almost twenty years ago.  He’d changed a lot in that time, the birth of the Hulk notwithstanding.  He had a feeling she hadn’t.  He had a sinking suspicion that all that radicalism he’d noticed simmering beneath her cool eyes and tight smiles had grown into something powerful and disturbing.  The only thing that had _ever_ mattered to her was the science.  The quest of keeping science pure had driven her.  Obviously it had pushed her to the point where she’d joined AIM and followed Sterns straight into breaking the law.  _Breaking the law_.  That didn’t really cover what they’d done to Steve.  The scariest part of it was that she was so smart.  A genius.  If there was a chance at stabilizing Lahey’s drug, she was the best equipped to find it.  She was certifiably insane and completely ruthless.  Steve was in serious danger.  They all were.

Which was why he had come.  Tony had flown him out to Santa Fe on a private jet from Stark Industries earlier that day.  He hadn’t said anything more about it, but Bruce could tell his friend thought this was a terrible idea.  Truth be told, he wasn’t sure it wasn’t.  He wasn’t an idiot.  He knew why Monica wanted him there, why Sterns did.  It wasn’t just because of his scientific acumen.  The Hulk was, at this point, maybe the only creature on the planet that could stand toe to toe with Steve as he was.  They wanted his mind, but they also wanted the monster.  And, worse than this, he was fairly certain they were both trying to turn him, too.  They were luring him into their world of crazy and evil with the promise of a cure for himself, with a chance to really _examine_ the super soldier serum and figure out how it worked.  Nobody ever had before.  As much as it disgusted Bruce to even consider it, this was an unprecedented opportunity for scientific discovery.  AIM wanted the best team available to study it.

Still, Tony hadn’t argued.  Tony hadn’t tried to stop him.  He’d only said one thing before leaving him at the Santa Fe airport.  _“Just remember what you wanted me to promise you.  You wanted me to keep you in check, to pull you back from getting too involved because you can’t take chances.  Just remember that because you’re going to have to do it yourself.  I can’t be there to do it for you.”_   Tony had been completely serious, worried and rattled and downright frightened though he’d been trying to hide it.  Bruce had nodded, unable to manage a single word of assurance.  _“Get Rogers out.”_   Tony had made him promise he would.

Of course, he’d left Bruce with a StarkPhone and a tracking device hidden in his coat.  He’d given him strict instructions to contact him the minute he figured out where they were keeping Steve.  Then he would come with the cavalry, with the Avengers and SHIELD and anyone else he could muster.  That wasn’t going to work.  It was all for nothing, and he knew it.  He’d figured Tony did, too.  Rappaccini wouldn’t be inviting him to this horror show without anticipating that he’d come, willingly and without threat of their plans being interrupted.  Sterns had been ahead of them every step of the way.  He wasn’t going to be thwarted by something so mundane as a GPS tracking chip.  Still, Bruce had nodded and played along.  Then Tony had reluctantly left for New York.

He’d taken a taxi to Desert State.  He hadn’t been back on campus in ages, not since moving out to the east coast of the US.  Things looked radically different; the university had of course grown since his undergraduate days.  But the clock in the well-kept commons was the same as it always had been.  It was tall, four-sided, and built of black metal.  It towered over the area, casting a shadow over the library.  It was summer, so the campus was quiet.  Bruce couldn’t quite believe he was doing this, standing out in the open in the shadow of the clock, squinting in the sunset and waiting for Monica just like he had twenty years ago after TAing summer organic chemistry.  Sweeping his eyes over the brown buildings and the flower beds and paths, breathing the hot, dry air, he could have sworn he was back there.  He almost wished he was, standing at the beginning of his career.  He’d do some things different.  _Lots_ of things.  He could remember it so clearly.  They’d meet, grab some pizza, and then head to the labs buried deep in the biological sciences building and after that his apartment off-campus.  Two kids whose minds had been filled with endless possibilities.

None of it had come true the way he’d wanted.  He decided not to think anymore and just wait.

He didn’t have to wait long.

She came from the paths by the library.  She wore a pant suit, maroon and form-fitting, with her black hair tightly pulled into a bun.  She was striking, somehow ageless to him, with that same intense glow in her icy blue eyes.  Her heels clacked over the path as she approached, and a small smile lifted her red lips.  “I have to admit that I didn’t think you would come,” she said when she reached him.

He’d forgotten how alluring her voice sounded.  It was deep for a woman, seductive almost, and her accent made it seem like a purr sometimes.  “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

She cocked a thin eyebrow.  “I assume that means you’ve come on some misguided quest to save your friend.  Believe me when I tell you that that’s not possible.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You know why not,” she said.  Her voice was cold and somewhat irritated.  “The only way to save him now is to work through the problem.”

Bruce’s anger stirred.  He’d gotten so proficient at keeping it contained that he did it subconsciously.  “You mean to find a way to turn him into some sort of weapon.  I’m not going to help you do that.”

She smiled a small, knowing smile that aggravated him further and made him feel emasculated and controlled.  He recalled then that she’d always liked that, making the men around her feel just a bit lower about themselves.  “The Leader said you would be resistant,” she said.  “He also said you would change your mind once you realize this is the only way.”

That was disturbing, to say the least.  It shook him down to his core, not just that Sterns could somehow _figure_ out the future, but that he’d bend to his baser wishes.  That he’d let his own desire for answers, his own obsessions, drive him again into acts that hurt people.  He swallowed thickly and prayed his disquiet never reached his face.  “And you believe everything he says.  He says jump and you do.  He says lie and kill, and you lie and kill.  He says kidnap Captain America, and you do that, too.  You follow him like some sort of mindless robot.”

“I follow him because he’s been right,” Monica returned evenly.  She clearly didn’t appreciate being questioned.

“Men who want power, men like Sterns, don’t share.  You’re smart, Monica.  You always have been.  You think he’s going to let you use this weapon he’s building?”

“I couldn’t care less about what happens to Captain America,” she said.  “Once I’ve overpowered the super soldier serum and pushed Lahey’s drug as far as it can go, I only care about extracting a stable genetic blueprint from him.  Something I can use to replicate both of the serums.  Something I can use to combine them.”

“They’re not compatible,” Bruce insisted, trying to keep his anger in check.

She nodded.  “No, they’re not.  Not yet.  Ironically the super soldier serum, which is required for the body to survive Lahey’s infusion, is intent on preventing the mutations necessary to complete the transformation.  It’s a problem.  We have to find a way to marry these two forces together before–”

“It’s a _person_ ,” Bruce coldly reminded.  How the hell could she be like this?  And Dan?  What the hell was wrong with these people?

“It’s a problem,” she repeated, “one I’d very much like for you to help me with.  Now you can either come with me and have a chance at that and everything that will come out of it, or you can walk away.  Decide.”

Her order was blunt, and it took Bruce a moment to realize she honestly meant it.  But he’d already made his choice.  He’d made it the minute Tony had shown him that video message.  This was his fault no matter how he turned it.  His control over the Gamma exposure down in Lahey’s lab.  His friends who had turned into monsters.  His past cutting into their future.  His life, it seemed, one mistake after another.  It all came down to this moment: Steve was suffering because of this _screwed up_ mentality that science mattered more than morality.  That _knowing_ was more important than the consequences.  He liked to think he wasn’t like that, but it had been his own arrogance and drive to understand that had turned him into a monster.  He really wasn’t a damn bit different.  This _could_ have been him.

He had to fix it.  He’d sworn to himself that he would, and he was going to.

“Let’s go,” he said.

She smiled.  She pretended not to care, but she was relieved.  He wondered if it was because she really did want his help or if it was because she was afraid of having her view of the world shaken if the Leader should be proven wrong.  It didn’t matter.  “Alright, Bruce.”  Together they walked from the university commons, the dying light of day covering them in shadows and blood.  “It’ll be just like old times.”

Not if he could help it.

* * *

They weren’t shy or at all reticent about searching him.  They found the StarkPhone, which one of Monica’s thugs in the SUV parked outside of campus unceremoniously smashed.  They made him change from his jeans and button down shirt and blazer into scrubs, and they threw his clothes in a dumpster behind the campus cafeteria, so that did away with Tony’s tracking device.  “Precautions,” Monica explained as she watched her men go about pulling a sack over Bruce’s head and manhandling him into the SUV.  Bruce felt the guns pointed into his ribs by the two men flanking him in the backseat.  He heard the car doors slam and the engine start.  Monica’s voice came from the front seat.  “And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, but keep the beast contained.  If you’re entertaining the thought of killing any of us now, rest assured the Leader has anticipated that.”

Bruce didn’t doubt it.  Besides, killing them now would leave him no closer to Steve.  So he sat still, uncomfortable and feeling claustrophobic with the blackness around his head, as the car drove.  Keeping the Hulk quiet inside him when he was being held like this required quite a bit of willpower, and he feared he wouldn’t be able to maintain it.  But he did.  It took a long time to get where they were going.  A couple hours passed in complete silence, the quiet punctuated by only the sound of seams in concrete as the SUV drove quickly down what Bruce supposed was an expressway of some sort.  During that time, he sat as relaxed as possible, drawing on the meditation skills he’d taught himself to keep himself calm.  He managed to sink down in the quiet of his subconscious.

Eventually the rapid, rhythmic thudding of the road under the tires ceased.  They pulled off the highway.  Bruce jerked from nothingness and paid attention again.  The car stopped and started and turned many times.  He tried to remember the sequence of steps, but he was disoriented, and without knowing which way they’d gone on the expressway (or which expressway it was), he had no frame of reference.  Finally, after a difficult eternity of patience, the car stopped completely.  “Out,” barked one of the men, the gun nudging painfully in between Bruce’s ribs.

He scooted out of the backseat.  His back and legs were cramped from sitting still so long, so his first steps were pretty clumsy.  The guards grabbed his arms and steadied him, leading him across what felt like a concrete floor, like the sort that would be in a parking garage.  Bruce forced himself to be pliant and cooperative.  He kept remembering that Steve needed him.  Steve was depending on him getting there to help him.  Killing these people solved nothing.

Doors were opened in front of them, and a blast of cold air rushed over them from inside a building.  He was led forward, and once the doors were shut again, the sack was pulled from his head.  Bruce squinted against the fluorescent brightness.  Monica stood before him, pleased.  “That’ll be all,” she said to the guards.  “This way, Bruce.”

Bruce glanced around before following her.  This was obviously some sort of research installation.  They stood in a gray and white lobby, one equipped with security guards and biometric scanners.  AIM’s black and yellow logo appeared on the white wall behind the desk.  He almost forgot that until a few months ago, AIM had been a “legitimate” corporation, a biomedical and weapons research and development firm that even had had contracts with the US government.  This building was likely only one of many they had littered across the country if not the world.  He couldn’t be certain where they were, but it had to be within a two or three hour drive from Santa Fe (unless they’d gone in circles, but Bruce didn’t think so).  Hopefully Tony would think to narrow his search around New Mexico, but somehow Bruce doubted this installation would appear on any maps or in any databases, government or otherwise.  If it did, they would have found Steve already.

She led him through a series of corridors, lined with rooms and offices.  Biometric scanners logged their passage through each of the double doors that separated the sections of the building.  They went deeper and deeper.  There were guards dressed in black and armed with guns everywhere, and Bruce knew they were there for one reason only.  AIM had obviously been recruiting an army of mercenaries and ex-black ops soldiers in preparation for this.  She directed him to an elevator, which she summoned with a flash of her ID badge and a fingerprint scan.  Bruce said nothing as they quickly ascended a couple of floors.  When the doors to the elevator opened, they were greeted by an escort of soldiers and a couple of researchers in lab coats.  One offered a coat to her, which she put on, and then a few tablets.  “The latest genetic tests, doctor,” he said.

Rappaccini looked over the results as they walked.  She looked pleased with what she found.  With just a bit of a smug grin, she handed the tablet to Bruce.  He quickly read it.  His stomach felt like it was plummeting down into his feet.  “89%,” he whispered.  This couldn’t be right.  Right before AIM had kidnapped Steve, Tony’s last analysis had indicated the rate of genetic mutation had decreased below 50%.  Tony had taken it to mean the super soldier serum was undoing the damage caused by Lahey’s drug.  They’d talked about it at length before Bruce had come here, Tony insisting anew it was a sign that the serum could heal Steve and win this war if they could just figure out how to help it.  Bruce hadn’t been so sure, but even he hadn’t been able to deny the possibility that Steve was getting better on his own.  But this data she’d given him was completely contrary to their previous findings.  The mutation rate had _increased_.  Drastically and quickly.  “How…”  They walked past a room that looked _disturbingly_ like the chamber Dan had built for his procedure.  It was connected to a reactor, yellow radiation signs adorning the walls and hallways around it.  Horror left him shaking.  “Oh, God.  You did it again.”

Monica took the pad back from Bruce’s limp hands.  “Yes,” she said.  “And a second infusion overwhelmed the super soldier serum’s defenses, just as I predicted it would.  A third might push it to nearly 100%.”

“It’ll kill him!” Bruce angrily said, alarmed and aghast with what they had done.  He couldn’t even fathom it.  Just looking at that metallic table and the restraints…  He felt sick with rage.  He tried to hold on.

“It may not be necessary.  First we have to get a better idea of his condition now,” she said, leading Bruce down another series of corridors.  “We ran this analysis on samples taken right after the second procedure.  That was approximately twelve hours ago.”  _Twelve hours ago.  Jesus._   “Unfortunately, the subject has been impossible to subdue since then.  That’s one of the reasons you’re here, Bruce.  We need you to get close enough to sedate him.”

“Come again?”

She wasn’t dissuaded by the hard edge in his voice.  “We need imaging and blood work and CSF samples, which we haven’t been able to obtain because he’s killed or seriously wounded anyone who’s come close to him.”  _Oh, God.  Steve…_   “We can’t even get a good read on his vitals.  You have to sedate him so we can more thoroughly assess him.”

“I’m not going to–”

“Bruce, this is one of the reasons the Leader requested I bring you here.  Surely you realize why.  You have defenses against him that no one else does.”  He had realized.  And as he feared, they’d realized it, too.  Sterns seemed to anticipate everything, including the need to ply whatever connection Bruce and Steve shared against the both of them.  It disgusted him.  “He’s gone twelve hours without water and food.  He’s in tremendous pain.  He’s blindly lashing out against his best interests.  I suggest you do this if you care about him.”

Bruce gritted his teeth.  He’d agreed to come here to help Steve, so he really had no choice.  She stopped outside a room with a white door.  A large observation window revealed a horrific sight.  Steve was curled on his side in the corner of a large, white cell.  Bruce couldn’t see his face.  He was shivering violently, his knees tight to his chest.  His hands were bound behind his back by thick metal cuffs.  There was nothing else in the room, but it was obvious someone had died near the door if the amount of blood smeared on the floor was any indication.  Bruce stood there, repulsed and frightened.  Monica was beside him.  One of her assistants prepared a syringe, which she capped and handed to him.  “Dendrotoxin.  Your formula is the only one that truly renders him unconscious.”

Bruce looked at the needle.  He swallowed through a throat tight with anger and tried to ignore the wailing of his conscience.  “Give me another one.”  The assistant complied.  He put both of the needles in the pocket of his scrubs.  He stared at Steve’s quivering form for another long minute, trying to empty his mind.  Then he headed toward the door of the cell.

“Bruce,” Monica called after him.  He stopped at the door, but he didn’t turn.  “Bear in mind that any fight you begin between him and the Hulk will likely not end well.  He’s uncontrollable.  What will your monster do against that, I wonder?”  It was a warning, clear and simple.  And he’d already thought of it.  His control over the Hulk was decent most of the time.  But against someone who was out of his mind and this dangerous?  The monster could kill Steve.  Or Steve could…  His heart started to pound a little harder in fear.  He wasn’t often frightened that the Hulk could be defeated simply because there seemed to be nothing and no one that could destroy him.  He wasn’t sure that was the case anymore.

The assistant at the door looked pale and frightened as he opened it for him.  Bruce took as deep a breath as his tight chest and knotted stomach could manage.  He stepped inside, and the door was shut behind him.

Steve didn’t react to the noise.  He didn’t seem to notice at all that someone was with him.  Bruce didn’t know whether to be encouraged or disturbed.  He stood stock still for what seemed to be an eternity before taking a tentative step to the right.  Steve didn’t move.  Bruce realized he was whispering.  Whispering to himself.  His lips were chapped and split and bleeding, barely moving around quick words that Bruce couldn’t understand.  He moved closer and closer, inches at a time it seemed.  “Steve?”  His voice was booming in the vacuous space.  “Steve?  It’s Bruce.”

The body jerked slightly and curled tighter in on itself, which was fairly remarkable considering Steve’s height.  Muscles that were bathed in sweat twisted and contorted underneath the loose fabric of the hospital pajamas he wore.   Bruce watched him shudder and shake, trying to keep his emotions under control.  “Bruce Banner.  I’ve come to help you.”

There was no answer.  Bruce hesitated.  He didn’t want to do anything to provoke Steve (or provoke the Hulk, who was already bristling and growling with his heightened panic).  But he couldn’t just inject Steve and force him down like these monsters had.  He needed to get a better idea of what was going on.  “Steve, I’m going to come closer.  Alright?”  Steve groaned and his muscles bulged as he fought against the restraints.  That stilled Bruce’s approach instantly.  Those needles in his pocket felt as though they were dragging him down.  “Please let me help you.”

“… need air support.  Falsworth, get clear…”

“Steve, it’s Bruce.  Bruce Banner.  Can you hear me?”

“He didn’t mean it, Buck.  Really he didn’t.  Just bein’ a jackass.”  Steve laughed.

Bruce grimaced.  This was bad.  “Focus on my voice.”  He knelt next to Rogers’ shivering form and laid a tentative hand on the other man’s hip.

“Get away from me!” Steve cried.  Despite his bound form, he managed to push himself across the floor to the corner.  The room shook.  The walls cracked and the lights flickered.  “Stay away!”

“Okay, okay,” Bruce quickly said.  He raised his hands and took a step back.  “I won’t come near you.”  He got a good look at Rogers now, and what he saw was upsetting to say the least.  Steve was incredibly pale.  His eyes were so brightly blue that they nearly glowed, and that made the darkness heavily embracing them and the pallor of his skin that much more striking.  They’d cut his hair short, incredibly so, and there were a series of sore, aggravated wounds on his scalp.  The doctors had obviously performed at least one biopsy (but it looked like more) to collect brain tissue to examine.  There was crusted blood around his nose and ears that had never been washed away.  He looked incredibly sick, a breath away from complete collapse.  He looked traumatized and unhinged and scared.  He looked nothing like the man he’d been.  “Steve,” Bruce whispered.

“You get away from me,” Steve hissed.  “Don’t touch me.”

“I won’t touch you unless you want me to.  I want help you.”

“No!  Get away!  _Get away!_ ”

“It’s alright,” Bruce promised.  “Take it easy.  Do you know who I am?”

“You’re one of ’em,” Steve answered quickly.  There was unspeakable rage in his voice.

“One of what?”

“HYDRA.”

Bruce winced slightly.  “HYDRA’s gone.  They’re dead.  You beat them.  Remember?”  He shook his head.  “It’s 2014.  I’m not one of them.  I’m Bruce Banner.  We fought together a few months ago.  We were a team.  The Avengers.  Remember?  You led us in battle.  Remember that?”  He decided to take a chance.  “I’m your friend.”

“You’re lyin’,” Steve snarled.  “Goddamn lyin’ sonuvabitch…  Bucky!”  He fought against his restraints again, but either he was too physically weak or too lost in delirium to coordinate his efforts because the cuffs didn’t come apart.  Steve pressed himself into the corner.  “I’m gonna kill you for what you did to us…”  He didn’t sound sure of himself, but the anger burning in his eyes was unmistakable and disturbing.  Bruce had no doubt he meant it.  “I’m gonna kill you.  I swear.  You won’t hurt me again!”

“Steve, no.  Calm down.  Please.  It’s Bruce.”

“I know you.  I know who you are.  Sick bastard.  You did this to me.”

That horrible feeling inside Bruce came to life with a painful jolt.  “No.  I’m your friend.”  He said this again, hoping it would pierce through the insanity.  “Bruce Banner.  Think.”

“Where’s Bucky?  They’re doin’ things to him, too.  HYDRA’s got him.  I gotta – I gotta help him.”  His wild blue eyes focused on Bruce for a second, but there was no recognition.  “You know who I’m talking about.  Sergeant James Barnes.  They took him.  Where is he?”  Bruce didn’t know what to say.  Steve was obviously caught in a state of waking nightmare.  Bruce feared there was nothing he could say or do to reach him now.  He was getting more and more agitated.  _“Where is he?”_

“Let me take you to him, okay?” Bruce quickly said.  Reasoning wasn’t working, so that only left playing along.  He felt like a bastard for doing it, but there wasn’t any other choice.  “I’ll take you to him.”

“You’re lying!” Steve yelled again around a sob.  He sagged against the walls, breathing hoarsely.  “Told him I’d keep fightin’ for him…  I promised him…  What did you do to him?  Where is he?  _What did you do to him?_ ”

Bruce took a chance.  He came closer and tentatively set a hand on Steve’s knee.  The sobbing man didn’t entirely notice.  He took that as a good sign.  He took it as a good sign that Steve hadn’t attacked him period.  Maybe on some level Steve did recognize him.  Maybe on some level…  “Steve, I want to help you.  I swear that I do.  Will you let me help you?”

Steve gasped.  “I have to find him, Bruce.  They took him.  They’re gonna hurt him.”

Bruce nearly broke apart himself in relief at the sound of his name.  But he only smiled and rubbed Steve’s knee gently.  “I know.  And we’ll find him.  But right now you’re the one I’m concerned about,” he said softly.  He pushed closer and put his other hand on Steve’s knee.  “Let me help you first.  Okay?  What hurts?”

Steve closed his eyes and licked his dried and torn lips.  “Everythin’.”

“Alright.  Just take it easy.”  Bruce reached a hand to Steve’s neck and felt his pulse.  It was weak and racing.  He was extremely dehydrated.  No matter what his other problems were, that needed to be treated, first and foremost.  He looked over his shoulder to the observation window.  On this side it was just a sleek pane of utter black, and all he could see was their reflections.  “Can we get some water?”  There was no response.  Bruce gritted his teeth in sharp frustration.  _Let him out._   It was an inclination that always plagued him.  A voice that always whispered in his head.  This time he wasn’t sure he should ignore it.  _Let him out and kill them.  They deserve it._ “He needs water,” he said firmly, “and let him loose.”

Nothing.  _You evil bitch_ , Bruce thought.  That voice came back in his head.  _Just take him and go.  Take him and let the Hulk out and go._   But he didn’t.  He couldn’t.  He didn’t want to risk the very thing with which Monica had threatened him.  And, honestly, he was afraid that Steve wouldn’t be safer elsewhere.  If he was uncontrollable, he posed a threat to everyone.  Bruce didn’t trust SHIELD, not with Sterns manipulating them somehow.  He didn’t trust the government.  He didn’t trust _anyone_.  What Steve needed was a cure, and at least here he could maybe use Rappaccini’s expertise to help him find one…

_God, help me.  What the hell am I doing?_

He slipped his hand into the pocket of his scrubs.  His fingers brushed over the needles.  He thumbed off the caps on both of them and pulled one free as carefully as he could.  “I need you to trust me, Steve,” he said softly.  “Please.  Listen to me.  I’ve got some medicine that will make you feel better.”

Steve’s eyes flashed in panic.  “No.  No medicine.  You’re gonna knock me out and do stuff to me.  That’s what always happens.  I can’t.  I won’t!  You’re gonna–”

“No.  I just want to make it better.  And I want to help you find Bucky, okay?”

“I’m not crazy!  I’m not!  He was here!  He…”  Steve’s eyes widened.  He sputtered on his breath, leaning forward and bracing his head on his knees.  “He said you’d come for me.  You and Tony and Clint.  Where’s Clint?”

“He’s coming,” Bruce soothed.  Gently he set his hand to Steve’s head.  The shorn hair was prickly against his fingers.  “But until he gets here, I need you to trust me.  I’ll help you find Bucky.  But I need to take care of you first.  You need this medicine so you can feel better.  You’re very sick.  You’re delirious.”

“Bruce, please…  Please don’t let them – I want to go home.”  A few tears, all his dehydrated body could spare, gathered in his eyes.  “Please get me out of here.  Please.”

Bruce’s heart ached in misery.  This was unrepentant evil.  Unforgivable.  “I’ll do everything I can.  Do you trust me?”

He didn’t deserve it.  Really he didn’t.  Steve regarded him with eyes that didn’t seem to see.  He was exhausted.  Maybe that would make this easier.  Maybe…  His lips barely moved with a breathy whisper.  “I trust you, Bruce.”

Bruce attacked.  He stabbed the needle right into Steve’s arm.  Steve howled in rage and the syringe burst in his hands before he could deliver the full dose.  He’d anticipated that, though, grabbed the second one and thrust that into Steve as well.  The partial dose combined with Steve’s own weakness prevented him from reacting fast enough to stop Bruce from injecting him again.  Still, the next thing Bruce knew he was flying.  He seemed to soar through the air for forever before landing hard on his back.  His head slammed into the floor, and pain exploded along his body.  _Hold him in,_ he thought.  _Hold him!_ He did.  The room quaked around him, tiles and walls cracking.  But it ended as quickly as it had started.

Bruce looked up and saw Steve limp in the corner, his eyes closed.  His breathing was evening out, and the tension was fading from his body.  Bruce didn’t waste a second, grimacing as he staggered to his feet.  He went back to Steve’s side and measured his pulse again.  The door to the room opened and the soldiers came, their guns drawn and their eyes glued to the prisoner.  The researchers followed.  “I want an IV started,” Bruce barked.  “Ringer’s and morphine, as much as we can.  And get the restraints off.”  Nobody moved.  “Now!”

As the doctors and scientists rushed to take care of Steve, Bruce moved back and glared out the window.  He knew she was standing there, watching the whole damn thing like some supreme scientist.  If she wanted him involved, she was going to have to make some concessions.  He was damn well going to take control.  And he was going to do everything in his power to find a way to undo the damage she had done.

* * *

Now that they had Steve sedated, it was easier to keep him that way.  The researchers removed the cuffs from Steve’s wrists, and Bruce winced at the bruises and burns.  Obviously they’d used them to deliver some sort of electrical shock, likely as incentive for cooperation.  Bruce ordered the burns treated, and nobody argued with him.  Steve’s vital signs were in deplorable shape; his blood pressure was dangerously low, he was tachycardic, and he was in shock.  It was likely from a combination of dehydration, radiation sickness, and the effects of Lahey’s drug.  However, an hour or two on a constant drip of electrolytes began to restore him, and Bruce stopped worrying.  At least, not for his life.

They were running an EEG now.  The output from the electrodes was flying across the computer monitors.  Steve was deeply unconscious, likely even beyond the capacity for dreaming, but his neural activity…  “Wow,” one the techs whispered.  “This is incredible.  There’s no way this is real.”

Monica folded her arms over her chest, smiling confidently.  Bruce couldn’t help but be shocked (and a little amazed).  The electrical activity in Steve’s brain was far beyond anything he’d ever witnessed.  Even under sedation, his brain was functioning at an unbelievable rate.  _Increased capacity._   _Maximized neurologic output._   “I’m calculating a 40% increase from the last scan, Doctor,” another researcher declared.  She couldn’t keep the excitement from her tone.  Bruce struggled to hold onto his temper.

Rappaccini nodded.  “Get another fMRI scan. I suspect we’ll start to see some changes.”

“You mean injury,” Bruce said.  “You were damn lucky he survived another dose of that drug.”

“The exposure wasn’t fatal this time,” Monica explained.  She glanced smugly at him again, as if to flaunt that she’d done something right, something _better_ , than he had.  She’d run Lahey’s procedure for a second time, and she hadn’t killed the patient. 

Bruce’s ire was hot and acidic.  “Are you saying I screwed up?”

“Not necessarily,” she said.  “We need more data.”

“More data.  How much more do you need?  The super soldier serum is the only thing keeping him alive.  Dan’s drug is poison, plain and simple.  It’s destroying him, and you tried to make it stronger.”

“Seems to me that I succeeded,” she declared.  She turned to her assistants.  “Move it.  And after the scans, let’s bring him back down to the playground for further testing.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The two assistants with the ever-present slew of soldiers went into the darkened room beyond and started disconnecting Steve from the electrodes and computers.  Bruce watched emptily as they maneuvered Steve’s leaden body onto a stretcher.  God, this was wrong.  Rappaccini noted a few things on her pad before handing it back to one of her assistants.  He didn’t think it was worth the effort to try and appeal to her humanity.  It was pretty obvious none of these people had any.  However, that didn’t stop him from trying.  “You’re never going to be able to control him if he’s suffering like this.  There’s no reason he should have been so dehydrated.  If these powers feed off his negative emotions, you’re only making it harder on yourselves and him by letting him get so delirious.”

“At this point, with the super soldier serum so depressed, delirium is inevitable.”

Bruce didn’t care if that was true.  Steve had been delirious before the second dose of the drug, but not like this.  He had been completely lost.  Cracking before his eyes.  Ungrounded and tormented.  _Insane._ “That’s cruel,” he reminded her, like that mattered.  Like she cared. 

“The Leader charged me with amplifying and stabilizing the effects of Lahey’s drug,” she explained, “and the drug causes aggression, psychosis, and paranoia.  Ameliorating the symptoms is not necessary and might even be counter-productive.  The super soldier serum needs to be suppressed to allow fulfillment of the transformation.”

“What the hell did you mean by testing him?”

“When he came here, the serum had reduced his abilities significantly compared to the reports you made from the incident in Stark Tower.  With an additional dose, he’ll have recovered what he lost.  I’m tentatively hoping his powers will far surpass our expectations, but that remains to be seen.”

“What the hell did you mean by _testing_ him?” he demanded again, unable to keep hints of the Hulk from coloring his tone.

She was unfazed.  “Exactly what it sounds like, Bruce.  Putting him in a room and seeing what he can do.”

Considering how much pain and distress the telekinesis was causing Steve, that only amounted to one thing.  “You’re torturing him,” Bruce angrily retorted.  “This is torture.”

“The Leader considered it perfecting him.”

“Damn it, Monica!  To hell with Sterns!  Think about what you’re doing here!”  Bruce forced patience into his tone.  It was a pitiful effort.  “We need to find a cure!  This is too dangerous!”

“You’re no less dangerous than he is, but you’ve long since given up on finding a cure for yourself.  Why is that?  Have you finally found purpose in the beast?”  Bruce gritted his teeth and maintained his ground.  “You want power.  Same as me.  You don’t want to give that up.  Not really.  Otherwise you’d have looked in Rogers’ blood for answers months ago.  Ever since they pulled him from the ice.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s the _only_ point.  Why are you here?  To help him?  He’s beyond help.  We can only go forward, take what we can from this.”

“That’s horse shit, and you know it.”

That angered her.  “This is the singular greatest moment in science of the last fifty years, since Erskine combined Gamma radiation and his serum to produce a super soldier.  We’ve taken it far beyond that.  Do you have any idea what this man is capable of doing?  He’s not just a weapon.  Men from legends?  Asgardians?  He’s stronger than a god.  And if we could somehow pull that power out of him and recreate it…  Do you have _any idea_ how what we would be?  We would be gods creating gods.”

“Look, even if you somehow manage to stabilize the reaction between Dan’s drug and the super soldier serum, and even if you somehow manage to extract it and replicate it, it’s toxic.  Look what it’s done to him!  It’s not controllable.  You have to find some way of fixing that!”

“It’s a balancing act.  The super soldier serum needs to be directed into keeping the body alive without inhibiting the genetic mutations.”

“That’s impossible!  The mutations are _causing_ the damage!  You know they are.  Dan’s drug is killing him.”

“Yes, but slowly.  The serum is keeping him alive, so hopefully we can derive a means to speed along the transformation process before he dies.”

“And what about the pain he’s in?  What about his mind?  This is tearing him apart.  There will be nothing left if this keeps up.”

“That’s not my concern.  If you’re worried about keeping him docile, then do as you did before.  Trick him into trusting you.”  Bruce jerked.  “Given his state of mental deterioration, you will probably be able to use the same tactic at least a few times.”

“God, you’re heartless.  It’s disgusting.  I’m not going to help you if you treat him like this!”

“Then walk away.  I want your help, but this is the plan to which I’m adhering.”  She left the room and effectively ended the debate.  Bruce stood still a moment, laboring to keep himself under control.  Anger flooded his mind, and power raced down his arm.  His fingers bulged and distorted and turned distinctly green as he rammed his fist into the wall.  The dry wall shattered and collapsed under the force of the blow.  He stood there, his chest heaving, teetering on the edge for what felt like forever.  But he pulled himself back.  She had him, and she knew it.

* * *

The super soldier serum was meant to achieve physical perfection.  It was designed to build a man capable of enduring damage, of taking crushing hits and recovering quickly.  It crafted greatness from a pure heart, strength from a desire to fight, endurance from a will to survive.  Those foundations were as much a part of the process as the serum itself and the radiation that had powered it.  There were questions about Erskine’s formula, so many in fact, and most would never be answered.  But this fundamental fact was indisputable: the serum amplified the man within.  And, in doing so, the serum had become part of the man and the man had become part of it.  They couldn’t be separated.

For the life of him, Bruce couldn’t figure out why no one seemed to be able to accept that.  Of course, that was a hypocritical thought because even he hadn’t been able to.  He suspected the refusal to see the blatantly obvious had something to do with the inherent difficulty in rationalizing science with immeasurable things like heart and soul.  They were all scientists, and so accepting an explanation that involved believing a man’s spirit could influence his biology was the equivalent of throwing one’s hands up in the air and giving up.  Blind faith was not a strong suit of theirs.  Neither was humility, not when it came to understanding things.  Arrogance was certainly a factor in everything they did.  Supreme faith in their own abilities, in _his_ own abilities.  He had tried to separate Erskine’s serum from Steve’s DNA countless times and every single attempt had failed.  Rappaccini had a whole team devoted to the problem, laboring over tissue and blood samples from Rogers in an attempt to extract the serum.  They were working around the clock, but as Bruce glanced over their progress, he realized they were cycling over the same ideas, the same _useless_ ideas.  They were getting nowhere fast.  Part of Bruce was relieved by that.  The other part, a larger part, was just damn frustrated.  Not understanding how the super soldier serum worked was prohibiting him from finding a cure as much as it was preventing AIM from developing their weapon.  Which meant this hell would go on until Steve died.

Bruce was becoming increasingly fearful of that.  Steve’s life would eventually be forfeit for all the stress this was putting on his body.  His vital signs were stable at the moment, but they were more erratic than they’d been when Bruce had last measured them in the SHIELD lab.  Even as deeply unconscious as Rogers was, his mind was racing, and because of that his heart was racing in stress, too.  His blood pressure and respiration rate sharply rose and fell in unpredictable waves.  He was drifting in and out of shock (as impossible as that seemed).  Bruce watched in dismay while his condition rapidly deteriorated only to snap back to a nearly normal state a breath and a blink later.  It was difficult to believe, but Erskine’s serum was as necessary to this weapon AIM wanted to create as Lahey’s drug was.  The drug was poison, no doubt about it.  No matter how powerful it was, no matter how it expanded the mind into these new and radical powers, it was _poison_.  The only reason Steve was alive was because the serum was healing him.  Sorting through all of the data he arrived at a singular (and when he thought about it extremely obvious) conclusion: when the damage outpaced the healing, Steve’s vitals got worse and his powers became more pronounced and uncontrollable.  They couldn’t just keep dumping Dan’s formula into the situation and get a useable product.  He’d said the same thing to Dan down in his lab; you couldn’t pour more fuel onto a fire and expect anything but more fire.  The two serums were not compatible.  Bruce couldn’t understand why no one realized _that_ , either.  There needed to be something else, a goddamn _stabilizing_ agent.  He could hardly believe it was coming back to this.

So he was also getting nowhere fast.

After the AIM doctors and researchers had finished with their imaging and gathering their tissue samples, they’d returned Steve to his cell.  This had been something of a debate between Bruce and Monica, but thankfully he’d found unlikely allies in the doctors on Rappaccini’s staff.  Testing, as they put it, had proven extremely strenuous the last time they’d performed it, and the subject required time to recover.  Bruce had just flat-out demanded that Steve be allowed to rest.  He leveraged the (very real) possibility that Steve could die if they pushed him too hard and too fast (or worse, he could completely lose control and turn an awful situation infinitely worse).  She’d been irritated but had agreed, stressing that Bruce needed to use this time to “work on the problem”.  She seemed worried, though not because she knew she was doing something heinously wrong.  That was more than a little perturbing.

Bruce had gone with Steve, buried in tablets and papers and a laptop and a couple of books.  He’d set all of that on the floor, the floor whose white tiles were cracked and even pulverized to dust in some places from Steve’s latest telekinetic attacks.  At least the blood was gone.  “Get me a table and a chair so I can work in here,” he ordered one of the nurses.

“Doctor Rappaccini wants the subject in isolation,” the man responded, eyeing Bruce warily.

“Tell Doctor Rappaccini that if she wants me to help her, she will get me a table and a chair so I can work in here,” Bruce coldly.  “She’s also going to get me a blanket and a pillow and some food and water.  And a cot.”

The man looked sufficiently intimidated and nodded and left.  Bruce went to the gurney on which Steve was sleeping.  He unfastened the straps over his friend before going to the IV machine and dialing back the dendrotoxin.  He really had no idea how administering it like this, in a constant stream, would affect Steve given his rapid metabolism, but it had to be safer and less traumatic than this cycle of allowing Steve to regain consciousness only to knock him out again.  While he did this, the soldiers and doctors returned with the items Bruce had requested.  “Help me get him onto the bed,” Bruce ordered.  The soldiers looked at him as though he was crazy, their rifles still pointed at him.  One of them held his earbud, obviously listening to instructions.  Then he nodded to his companions, and the company of guards assisted Bruce in moving Steve to the cot.

Steve wasn’t stirring, not even with soporific effects lessened.  That worried Bruce because he’d snapped out of sedation quickly in the past.  He went about changing the dressings on Steve’s wounds, noting with dismay that not much healing was occurring.  The repulsor burn on his shoulder was days old and should have been mostly gone at this point, but it wasn’t.  The burns on his hands and wrists were painful and inflamed.  Bruce winced as he wrapped them anew in gauze.  That didn’t bode well for the potency of the serum, that it was so taxed it couldn’t contend with minor flesh wounds.  He sighed and put the pillow under Steve’s head and draped the blanket (that was too small) over as much of his body as he could.  Then he went to work.

Quite a lot of time went by in complete silence.  Bruce knew he was being watched, but he could still concentrate.  Learning to manage his anger, to stay focused and in control, had other benefits.  He cleared his mind and quickly started pouring over the data.  He looked over the molecular structure of Lahey’s drug anew and the DNA base pair chain it was creating.  The geneticists working for Monica had made some headway on linking proteins to the gene sequences, but considering some of the base pairs included nucleotides he’d never seen before, their results were limited.  And it wasn’t Dan’s drug they didn’t understand.  This really went back to the fundamental question: how the super soldier serum created cellular resistance and regeneration.  He hadn’t been lying to Tony about the time and effort needed to answer this.  People had been trying for seventy years, and no one had.  Monica’s workers had compared Steve’s DNA to a normal human’s and had identified some genes that they thought must have come from the serum (most of which Bruce himself had identified in the past), but there was little data on what they did and how they related to each other and normal cellular function.  And the addition of Dan’s drug was only complicating matters, with some of Steve’s cells fully expressing the DNA sequences caused by the chemical and others not.  It was a mess.  A really big one.  A goddamn tangled knot, and he didn’t even know where to start.

So he didn’t.  Instead he examined the recent CT and fMRI scans.  The fMRI showed what he’d suspected after the EEG; there was a phenomenally large increase in synaptic activity throughout Steve’s brain, but particularly in the frontal and temporal cortices as well as the limbic systems.  Memory, emotion, and personality.  Executive function.  He suspected the trillions of neuronal connections in the normal human brain had been augmented by an order of magnitude or more.  The CT scan was disturbing, as well, but for an entirely different reason.  That diffuse vascular damage he’d noticed days ago had increased exponentially.  Steve’s brain was bleeding all over.  In the seconds that had elapsed between images, the injuries shifted and changed; the serum was moving that quickly to try and repair the injuries.  But it was being overwhelmed.  Bruce looked up and rubbed the ache behind his forehead.  “God,” he whispered.

He leaned back in his chair.  He didn’t know how this was going to end, but he was beginning to have doubts that there was any way to save Steve’s life, at least not as it had been.  Maybe before, when the serum had been gaining ground in the battle, there’d been a chance.  Now…

Steve groaned.  Finally, three hours after pulling him off the dendrotoxin, he was coming around.  Bruce stood and went to the side of the cot.  He brought a cup of water with a straw.  “Steve?”  Steve rolled gingerly to his side.  Bruce had a pad wired into the facility’s biometric scanners, and he could see Steve’s vitals improving again, reaching a still-depressed but normal enough state.  “Steve, it’s Bruce.  Are you awake?”

Another hoarse groan.  Bruce held back, wary and worried about the sort of state in which Steve could be.  Dangerous and delirious.  He hoped not.  He _really_ hoped not.  “Steve?”

“Bruce?”  The whispered word was soft, barely a breath of air through Steve’s lips.  He was turned to face the wall.  “I…  I can see you.”

Bruce’s brow furrowed in confusion.  “What do you mean?  Can you look at me?”

Steve didn’t answer right away.  His body was completely still.  Relaxed and pliant.  For the first time in days, he was awake and not tense with pain.  He wasn’t even shivering anymore.  “Don’t need to,” he said.  “I can _see_ you.”  Bruce didn’t understand.  “Your heart’s beating.  There’s air going in and out of your lungs and into your blood.  There’s electricity in your brain.  Cells growing.  Dividing.  Living and dying.  Energy inside you and all around you.”

“Steve–”

“It’s amazing.”  Bruce didn’t know what to say.  He shifted to kneel on the floor beside Steve’s cot.  He set the water down, sighed, and dropped his chin to his chest.  He was at a total loss.  He didn’t like the feeling.  It was helplessness and frustration and knowledge that he _should_ be able to fix this but he couldn’t.  He hated it.

“Promise me something, Bruce.”

Bruce looked up.  His heart was thrumming in anxious misery.  He wondered if Steve could hear it and see it and feel it.  “Anything,” he heard himself say.

“Promise me that if I ever raise my hand to you or anyone else, you’ll kill me.  You’ll be the only one who can.”  Steve’s body relaxed even further, a long breath escaping him.  “I don’t know how much longer I can fight.”  The words quieted to little more than a whisper again.  “I promised everyone I would.  Bucky and Peggy and Tony…  Clint.  And I’ll keep trying.  I’ll keep trying.”  That last part sounded more like a promise to himself.  “But I don’t know if I can win.  I feel…”

“What?” Bruce asked quietly.  He moved closer and set his hand to Steve’s arm.

Steve didn’t flinch.  “Weightless.”  He grunted half a chuckle.  “And kinda numb.  Maybe the worst is over.”

Somehow Bruce doubted it.  “Steve, I won’t–”

“He’s here.”

Cold terror washed over Bruce.  “Who?”

“I don’t know, but I could feel him land.  I could feel the helicopter rotors cutting through the air and the engine powering down and people walking…  A lot of people.  And then I could feel the power in his head.  So much power.  He’s not like the others.  Not like you.  I don’t…  I think he’s comin’ for me.”

 _Sterns._ Bruce was reeling for a moment.  It had to be.  Even if it seemed impossible, it _had to be_.  Sterns had somehow escaped SHIELD incarceration at the Fridge.  Sterns had somehow made it here.  It made some sort of sick, twisted sense.  Sterns had planned this whole thing from the start.  He’d make sure that he could be here to see his plot come to fruition.  To wield his weapon.

Steve’s soft voice drew him from his mounting dismay.  “Bruce, please.  I need you to promise me.  I need you to do it before he gets here.  Promise me.”

“I can’t–”

Steve finally turned to face him.  His eyes were bright, so bright.  He was still white, but he looked better somehow.  More grounded.  _A moment of clarity._   “ _Promise me_ ,” he implored.  “I can’t think straight anymore, so I need to know now that you understand me.  I might not get another chance.”

_“Steve–”_

“I’d rather die than be turned against SHIELD and the Avengers.  Do you hear me?  I’d rather die than hurt anyone.”

Bruce couldn’t fathom what he was asking.  The calm note of acceptance in his voice was staggering, making the request all that much _worse_.  _A moment of clarity_.  Maybe his last.  Steve knew it.  Bruce knew it, too.  His lips moved.  His voice spoke.  His heart ached.  “I promise, Steve.”

Steve closed his eyes and sagged down into the cot.  He swallowed and nodded in relief.  “Thanks,” he said softly.

He couldn’t stand to leave it at that.  “But I’m not giving up.  You hear me?”  He grabbed both of Steve’s bandaged hands and held them tight over the other man’s chest.  “I’m going to find a way to fix this.  I swear to you I will.  I’m not going to give up.  You keep fighting, and I will, too.”

Steve’s lips curled in a tiny smile.  He squeezed Bruce’s hands.  “Okay,” he said.

Bruce nodded.  “Okay.”

“I want to get better,” Steve whispered.

“I know.”

“My da hates it when I get sick.  He gets real mad.  So I wanna get better, so he doesn’t get mad at mama.  Mama cries when he’s mad.  I don’t like it when she cries.”

Just like that, the moment was over.  Bruce looked away.  He felt brittle.  So damn brittle.  “I know.”

* * *

Bruce got Steve to drink a little water and eat some oatmeal.  He managed a few spoons of it before he turned even paler and his stomach started to rebel.  Bruce decided not to push it; he added a bag of nutrients to the IV instead.  Steve went back to sleep after that, whispering again about Brooklyn and his father and the Howling Commandos and SHIELD, and Bruce let him.  It was the best thing for him, so long as it was peaceful, and for the moment it was.  It was a relief to let him go down as he breathed pleas to his mother and Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter and Clint, people who had truly saved him when he’d needed saving.  They were all gone, though, and Bruce was the only one there.

And he wasn’t good at strengthening a soul or whispering solace, so he stood and went back to work.  He was driven more than ever to find answers.  They _had_ to be there.  He had more data than he could analyze now, more than he knew what to do with.  Data from Dan, data from SHIELD, his own tests that he’d run, everything AIM had gathered…  There had to be a way to make the serum stronger or a way to shut down Dan’s drug.  Or something to inhibit the drug and reverse the damage.  And if not that, something to at least stabilize what was happening to lessen the stress on Steve’s body and give them more time.  There had to be something.  There _had_ to be.  He wasn’t going to rest until he found it.  A small whisper of dissension kept drifting about his head that this was _why_ Monica and Sterns had arranged for him to be here.  They wanted him to find answers.  It was like being down in Lahey’s lab again, a gun to Tony’s head.  He had no choice.

So he kept working.

He didn’t find anything, and he was so tired that things started to blur together.

It wasn’t long after he fell asleep that Sterns decided to make his grand entrance.

The door to the cell opened.  Bruce snapped to awareness.  The guards came in first, followed by the research team and Rappaccini.  She didn’t look pleased, skewering Bruce with a taut glare as she folded her arms over her chest.  Bruce pulled his glasses from his face and stood from his chair, adrenaline spiking inside him and bringing him out of the fogginess of sleep and the Hulk out of silence.  Sterns stepped inside last, glancing around the room as if to appraise it.  He was in the middle of talking.  “–don’t need to worry about SHIELD.  They’re going to be plenty busy with the present I’ve sent their way.”  He looked as hideous as he had when Bruce had last seen him in the Fridge, maybe even more so because he was free and he was downright giddy about it, grinning like a fool.  His dark eyes fell on Bruce.  “Oh, great.  Bruce,” he said in greeting.  “I’d say it’s a pleasant surprise, but it’s not a surprise at all.”

 _Nor is it pleasant._ “How did you escape?” Bruce tersely asked.

“Oh, you know.  If you build it, they will come,” he sneered.  Then his eyes lit up, wickedly bright with joy.  “And there he is!  The man of the hour!”  Sterns practically skipped across the room towards the cot where Steve was still soundly sleeping.  He fell to his knees beside it in a state of wonderment.  “Waiting for me, just like I knew he would be.”

“Don’t,” Bruce warned.  He was around the desk in a breath, desperate to put himself between Steve and Sterns.  The monster growled, and this time he’d oblige it.  He’d let the Hulk loose if he had to.

Sterns looked over his shoulder.  “No, _you_ don’t,” he said as if he could read his mind.  Bruce was starting to think he could.  “And you won’t.  You won’t risk his life.  For being a man tied to his anger, you sure have a weighty conscience.  It feels like a ton, even from over here.”  Sterns’ eyes flicked to the laptop and the papers spread across the table.  “How’s the research going?  Figure it out yet?”  Bruce narrowed his eyes.  Sterns’ expression turned knowing, maybe a touch comforting, like a friend trying offer up some encouragement.  It was disgusting.  “Don’t let it get you down.  You’ll figure it out.  It’s why you’re here.  Because you’re going to figure it out.  Really.  There’s a good chance of it.  You just need to go with your gut, Mr. Green.”

“I’m not interested in helping you,” Bruce snapped.  “I’m here to help Steve.”

“Uh-huh.  Keep telling yourself that,” Sterns said.  He turned back to the bed, where Steve was oblivious.  He stared at Rogers, stared long and hard like he was analyzing and measuring what he saw.  And then he laid his hand on Steve’s forehead.  Bruce nearly lurched in terror, but the guns pointed at him and his utter lack of understanding of what was going on kept him glued to his spot.  Sterns shook, smiling and frowning at once somehow, closing his eyes and panting.  “Wow,” he breathed as he pulled away.  An appreciative grin came to his face.  “There’s some amazing stuff going on in there.  It’s moving so fast I can’t even…  Wow.”

“You can’t even what?”

“Control him,” Sterns said, turning and staring at Bruce.  “Like I said would.  And I think I can.  But not right now.”

Monica suddenly stepped forward.  “He’s weak, sir,” she said, “but his state is fluctuating.  Unfortunately, even if we knew how to neutralize the serum, it’s keeping him alive.”

“Yep.”

She looked angered and flustered at the flippant and dismissive response.  “The genetic mutation rate is nearly 93%, but it’s not stable.  Given what we’ve seen, with enough time the serum will reduce it again.”

“Probably.  Unless Bruce here figures out how to switch off the serum long enough to let Lahey’s drug finish the job.  That would be swell if you could figure that out, Bruce.  That is why I invited you to this party.”

Rappaccini scowled.  If a glare could kill, Sterns would be deader than a doornail.  “The efficacy of Lahey’s drug is tied to his mental state, sir.  If you allow him to recover, he’ll become more defiant.”

“I know.  See, here’s the thing.  Defiance is good.  Defiance makes your heart pound.  Right, Bruce?  Gets the old blood flowing.”  Bruce stiffened at Sterns’ words.  The other man leaned close to Steve’s sleeping form, looking him over.  He looked like he was aching to touch him again, but like an addict finding a modicum of restraint, he pulled his twitching fingers away.  “Yeah, defiance is good.  If he fights, he’ll get angry.  And if he gets angry, he’ll struggle more.  And if he struggles more, the pain will get worse which will make him angrier and he’ll struggle harder and the pain will get worse and around and around we go.  It’s a beautiful thing, cause and effect.”

Bruce’s blood turned to ice at the mere thought of what Sterns was suggesting.  “You’re never going to be able to control that!”

“Precisely, Bruce,” Sterns said.  “Even I have limits.  And so does he.  So do you.  Like I said before, everyone does.  And everyone’s thoughts are pliable under the right pressure.”

“Pliable?  I don’t–”  And suddenly he understood.  How Sterns had made all of this happen.  What he meant to do now.  “Oh, my God.  You can control people’s minds.”  And it went further.  So much further.  “You’re going to control Steve’s mind.”

“Well, in the end, yes,” Sterns said.  “But it’s not that simple.  People who have a particularly strong will, like you and Stark and Captain America here… your minds aren’t so easy to subdue.  I can try, but I might not succeed.  And with something this explosive, I don’t want to accidentally shoot myself in the foot, if you know what I’m saying.”

 _No.  Oh, God, no.  Please not this._ “You son of a bitch,” Bruce hissed.

“So I really need him to break himself, because even as messed up as he is right now, I don’t think I can bend his will.  I can _feel_ his resistance.  He’s still fighting.  _Still._   But that’s Captain America for you, I guess.”

“You can’t do this,” Bruce said.  “You can’t.”

“I can, too.  Watch me.  I can make him do what I want him to do, things he swore he wouldn’t do, but I _need_ to break him first.  I need all those defenses he’s built around himself torn down.  Maybe shutting down the serum will do it.  It’s as much a part of him as his brain or his heart or his soul.  Can you keep fighting with an arm or a leg cut off?”  Sterns shrugged.  “Or maybe increasing the transformation rate to the max with another dose will do it.  I don’t know.  Maybe, just _maybe_ , a plain, old-fashioned _push_ in the right direction is all we need.”  Sterns nodded, like he was mulling over the problem.  “Yeah, maybe.  He’ll push himself with all of that rage and pain building inside him.   We’ll get him right to the edge.  And when I find the thing that makes him fall and shatter…”  He smiled.  “I’ll stick my hands in his head and put the pieces back together however I want.”


	15. Chapter 15

“He’s _where_?”

Tony sighed.  His head was pounding, and he was so tired that he was well past the stage of insomnia drunk where veritable genius came pouring from his brain.  He was just flat-out miserable, hurting all over and grumpy and sick and weary of this mess.  He’d done nothing else but work and study and try to figure things out for the last three days, and he was basically running on empty.  He had no patience to deal with this now.  “I don’t know _where_ , Nick.  If I knew that, I’d be hauling ass over there with every gun and security guy I could find to put an end to this shit storm.  But I lost track of Banner after they left Desert State and I haven’t been able to find him since.”

Fury was, for lack of a better word, furious.  He had good reason to be.  Since Barton had returned from the Fridge yesterday, his patience had rapidly deteriorated.  Apparently Sterns had orchestrated everything to lead up to his escape.  Barton and Romanoff had unwittingly delivered right into his waiting fingers the means to get away from the Fridge scot-free, and he’d kidnapped two more SHIELD agents in broad daylight in the process.  Not kidnapped exactly.  Kidnapped implied against their will, and from Clint’s account, Hill and Romanoff had willingly gone with him, even protected him.  Clint had some wild story, some crazy explanation, that involved mind control and clairvoyance and other things that seemed ridiculous and impossible.  At this point, Tony was willing to believe just about anything.

Of course, that meant that what they were dealing with was well beyond evil scientists and mad men.  Tony had been worried about this from the second Steve had been kidnapped.  They’d ventured into super villain territory.  Into threat to all of humanity territory.  If Sterns could control people’s minds, not only did they have to face him and AIM, but they had to potentially face themselves.  Their allies made into enemies.  Their friends flipped against them.  SHIELD was compromised.  Romanoff and Rogers were compromised as well.  If Sterns got his grimy, greedy fingers on Steve, well, the shit would truly hit the fan.  The world needed the Avengers to contend with a threat like this.  But Captain America had gone crazy and was being used against them.  Black Widow was lost.  The Hulk had left on some crazy quest for redemption (at least, Tony hoped that was what it was).  Thor was nowhere to be found; he hadn’t been spotted since the incident in Greenwich a few months ago.  That left only Iron Man and Hawkeye, and both of them were so beaten and battered that the odds weren’t looking good.

So, yeah, Fury was pissed with good reason.  But Tony was still in no mood to take it.  “You sent him into the hands of the very people who want to turn Lahey’s drug into a weapon without any way of tracking him?” the SHIELD Director accused.  There was nothing subtle about it.  It was an accusation, plain and simple.

“I sent Bruce, the only one of us with any chance of figuring this out, to Steve,” Tony corrected.  He gritted his teeth.  “And I’m not a goddamn moron.”

“Prove it, because I sure as hell am not convinced!”

“I gave him a tracking device and a phone.  I figured the phone would get confiscated, but they must have made him change clothes or something…”  Fury offered him a withering scowl.  “Look, I didn’t want to risk it.  These assholes have been on top of us every other time.  You think I wanted him to go alone?  Rappaccini said the Leader had anticipated SHIELD or the Avengers getting involved, so I stayed back.”  Fury still didn’t look pleased or even convinced by his reasoning.  Frankly, Tony wasn’t, either.  This felt akin to delivering into the hands of a terrorist who already had a nuke pointed at you the means to arm it.  Maybe fear was too much of deterrent in this case.  But something told him if they’d moved in with Banner, Steve would be dead.  Or worse.  And Bruce had told him to stay back.  To let him handle this.  “Bruce is doing what he thinks is best.  This was the only way to get to Steve, and he took it.”

“The only way,” Fury returned.  He was leaning into the main conference table on the bridge of the helicarrier, his hands planted on the glass surface.  “You realize that the time we have to fix this is rapidly disappearing.  If Sterns can control minds–”

“He’s going to control the Cap and turn him into a living, breathing WMD, yes.  I made the connection, Nick.  I made it days ago.  We already knew the what.  All we’ve learned from this is the how.  And that doesn’t get us any closer to stopping it.”  On the contrary, despite the fact that Banner was working on the problem, they felt farther than ever before from saving Steve.

Clint sat a few seats down.  He didn’t look well.  His face was pale and unshaven.  He had a new bruise discoloring his jaw.  His shoulders were slumped and his eyes were glazed with fatigue and defeat.  Tony supposed this was with good reason, too.  He just had the two people in the world he considered friends taken by the enemy to be used as cogs and tools in their evil machinations.  That was distressing.  “Why doesn’t Banner just destroy them?  All of them?”

“Rogers too?”  Tony shook his head.  He sure as hell wasn’t going to mention his concerns about Bruce being tempted by the prospect of finding a cure for his own condition.  He didn’t even know how much of a concern it was.  He didn’t know _anything_ anymore.  “Wiping AIM out doesn’t solve the problem.  We have to find a way to fix the Cap.  Banner knew that, hence why he went.  Like it or not, AIM’s still holding all the cards, so he felt we needed to play by their rules.”

Clint’s eyes flashed.  “You mean those rules that involved you getting shot and the both of us used as leverage against our friends?  Playing by their rules has gotten us nothing but hurt,” he snapped.

As though mere mention of the wound aggravated it, Tony’s abdomen suddenly locked into a spasm of pain.  “What the hell do you want me to say, Clint?  I don’t like it.  It’s a freaking raw deal, the _whole_ thing.  But I trust Bruce to do what’s best.  I’m sure he’ll kick the crap out of them if he thinks that’s the only way, but I gotta tell you, I hope it doesn’t come to that.  I’ve already had a taste of Captain Crazy versus the Hulk, and it was terrifying.  It took out the top of my tower, and Steve wasn’t even trying to _fight_.  If he’s…”  Tony shook his head.  “I trust Bruce to do what he needs to.”

Fury leaned back.  “Yes, well, while your abundance of faith in Banner is inspiring, your lack of faith in SHIELD has tied our hands.  _Again._ ”

“Go to hell,” Tony snapped.  “Last I checked, I wasn’t the one who let the Leader out of his cage.”

“No, _you_ were the one who let Rappaccini take Rogers in the first place.”  Tony was so shocked by the outright blame that he couldn’t think of anything to say.  Besides, Fury was thundering on.  “And I’m not inclined to sit around and wait for this to get worse.”

Clint shook his head.  “I don’t think that’s possible,” he muttered.  Fury saddled him with a glare strong enough to cut through steel.  Clint wasn’t daunted.  “How the hell do we fight someone who can practically see the future?”

That really drove their helplessness home.  Their inability to stop this, to get ahead and protect each other, was maddening.  Tony had never felt so hopelessly and helplessly outgunned.  So he ignored it because he wasn’t about to accept that they’d been beat.  “Nobody can see the future.  That’s grade-A crap.  He just makes predictions.  Assumptions.  Well, you know what they say about you when you make assumptions.  You make an ass out of–”

“You got something useful to say?  Because this isn’t funny,” Clint seethed.  “My friend is being tortured and beaten down and having his mind crushed so some sick bastard can control him like a goddamn puppet.”

“Rogers won’t break,” Fury said again.

Tony didn’t want to debate this again because at this point he didn’t have enough confidence to champion either side.  Instead he focused on what he could do.  He’d always been good at that.  He stood from his chair and brought up a map of New Mexico on the display over the conference table.  “I took the liberty of doing of some research.  These are all the installations large enough to accommodate the equipment necessary to do the type of research Rappaccini was talking about and, well, keeping a telekinetic super soldier in captivity.  I kept the search within a four hundred mile radius of Desert State University, which is the last place I got a hit from Banner’s GPS.”  The map was literally overrun with blue dots, thousands and thousands of them, most of which were clustered around Santa Fe, Albuquerque, El Paso, and Denver.  “Unfortunately, there’s a heck of a lot of open ground to cover–”

“Stark, they could have taken Banner anywhere.  Who’s to say they didn’t get him on a plane and fly him across the world?” Fury irately reminded, though there was a glint of relief in his voice that somebody had some attempt to find their lost teammates.

“There’s no way to know, but I have to think they wouldn’t chance that.  Maybe Bruce isn’t as well-known as the Cap or me, but he’s still recognizable.  And do you think they’d want to risk taking the Hulk on an airplane?  Plus they would have had to make that same trip with Rogers, which would have been equally dangerous.  Plus with SHIELD watching every airport in the country, it would have been a hell of a thing to escape notice.”

“You’re forgetting that Bruce wanted to go with them,” Clint reminded.

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean he’d just be compliant.  Or predictable.  And Steve was definitely neither.”

Clint’s expression hardened with anger and bitterness.  “Sterns predicted everything and everyone else.  And Steve was unconscious.”

“And you’re forgetting that Sterns had his hands in our intelligence network,” Fury said.

Tony sighed, trying to stay patient.  “I’m not.  But why risk exposure if they didn’t have to?  Maybe Sterns is a showy asshole, but he’s not careless.  And maybe Bruce is a willing… participant…”  _God, that sounds wrong.  Wrong on so many levels._ “But he’s still there to save Steve, and they can’t control the Hulk.  I don’t care how strong they are.  No, if they wanted to bring Bruce to Steve, I have to think they would have done it by car.  It’s the safest option, with the best amount of control and least visibility.  Which means it needs to be fairly local.  Again, they could have driven him across the country, but that’s dangerous for the same reason.  It _has_ to be local.”  Tony tried to sound more confident than he really was and gestured to the map.  “Hence this.  And if you two are finished raining on my parade, I was going to show you it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Barton and Fury shared a quick glance, and the latter nodded.  Tony nodded, too.  “Okay, like I was saying, there’s a heck of a lot of open ground to cover.  And forests and mountains, which make satellite imaging more difficult.  But I took the Hopkins Research Institute as a baseline for the type of parameters another place like it might have.  Size and infrared signatures and that sort of thing.  I ran that through the computer and came up with this much smaller haystack.”  He tapped a space on the console and more than three-fourths of the dots vanished.  “And if you make the assumption the place has a nuclear reactor you get this.”  Even more dots disappeared.  “ _And_ if you make the assumption that they’re not dumb enough to be located in a major city…  _Voila._ ”  Now there were only a handful of installations left.  “I admit that last one may be a stretch.”

“No,” Fury said.  His tone had lightened with excitement.  “This is something.  The most we’ve had.”  His quick eye devoured the map before him.  The places left were spread around the state, of course, some even within the borders of Colorado and Texas.  A few were nestled in mountainous or heavily wooded areas that veritably screamed a desire for privacy.  “You got any information on these places?”

Tony gritted his teeth slightly.  “Unfortunately, no.  Not enough to eliminate any of them, anyway.  I’ve had JARVIS digging through anything he can get his hands on, but there isn’t much.  I even hacked the Pentagon to see if any of these are owned by the government.”  Fury appraised him evenly.  “Trust me, Cyclops, if I can hack SHIELD, I can hack anything.”

Clint didn’t have the patience for this.  “And?”

“Well, none of them are that I could tell.  But I wouldn’t put it past the G-men to hide things in less accessible places.”  Fury’s irritation returned.  “Look, maybe it’s a stretch.  But I narrowed the whole freaking country down to these few dozen possibilities.  Take this and run with it.  Seriously.  We need to go out there and start crossing them off.  I mean, I doubt AIM is dumb enough to plaster their logo all over their lobby, but–”

“Director Fury.”  Sitwell’s call interrupted their meeting.  He stood lower down the bridge.  His face was in its normal unremarkable, professional state, but his eyes glimmered in concern.  “Sir, we’ve got a quinjet approaching.  Fast.”

Clint was up and out of his chair in a blink.  With energy and alacrity that was downright stupendous given his slumped posture before, he bounded down into the well of the bridge to look over the shoulders of the technicians.  “From where?”

“West.  ETA: five minutes.”

“Is it one of ours?”  Fury asked, quickly approaching as well.

“All of our birds are grounded at the moment except the one we lost yesterday.  There’s nothing on the manifest for this time, either, but I’ve got a call into the Triskelion to see if they’re–”

“It’s gotta be Natasha and Maria,” Clint said.  He leaned back and turned his sharp gaze at Fury.  “It has to be.”

“Sitwell, can you confirm?” Fury asked.  Tony stepped closer.  He had an increasingly bad feeling about this, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one.  Fury’s voice was tight with apprehension as a quiet second or two slipped away.  “Sitwell?”

Sitwell turned his eyes away from the monitors.  “Just picked up their transponder.  It’s them.”  Fury nodded, and Sitwell turned back to the console.  He tapped a button on the side of his headpiece.  “SHIELD Four-eight-two, this is SHIELD Alpha-one.  Respond.  Over.”  The entirety of the bridge was utterly still and silent as everyone waited for an answer, but one never came, and the quiet dragged on for what felt to be forever before Sitwell prompted them again.  “SHIELD Four-eight-two, please acknowledge.  This is SHIELD Alpha-one.  What is your condition? Over.”

Again there was nothing.  Tony felt his heart beat faster.  There was simply no way to know who or what was aboard that quinjet.  It could well be Romanoff and Hill, but if it was, why weren’t they answering?  This whole thing stank of a trap, and they all knew it.  Why would Sterns send them back, at any rate?  Why would he let them go?

As the silence dragged on, Fury gave Sitwell a small nod.  Sitwell clenched his jaw slightly.  “SHIELD Four-eight-two, respond or we will be forced to consider you a hostile threat and take immediate action to destroy you.  Over.”  Clint looked away, staring at the radar screen as though willing the quinjet to answer.  Tony found he could barely breathe.  Still there was no answer.  In any other situation, that probably would have been enough for Fury to give the order.  But in this case, the dismayed Director only hesitated before warily nodding at Sitwell again.  “SHIELD Four-eight-two, this is your _final_ warning.  Indicate what your condition is and that you are no threat or we will fire.”

“SHIELD Alpha-one, this is Four-eight-two.”  Hill’s voice broke the tension over the bridge like a hammer shattering ice.  Tony could hardly believe it.  He’d been expecting the worst, that the jet was flying on autopilot or something and delivering back two corpses, but that wasn’t the case.  Maybe he was more relieved than he should have been.  Maybe they all were.  “Request permission to land in the bay.  Over.”

It was Fury who answered.  “Agent Hill, status.  Now.”

“Fine, sir.  We need to land, and then I can explain everything.”

Fury didn’t look convinced.  He moved quickly down into the well.  At this point, the jet was close enough that the techs had gotten a visual of it.  The monitors were displaying live video of it careening towards the carrier.  It looked intact and with no obvious signs of damage.  Maybe that should have been a relief, too, but it only made Tony more suspicious.  If they were fine, why had they waited until Sitwell threatened to blow them out of the sky before answering?

Fury hesitated only a second.  “Permission granted.”

“Thank you, sir.  Four-eight-two out.”

Sitwell looked troubled, and with good reason.  “Sir, this isn’t right.  We can’t just let them aboard.  There’s no telling what Sterns is making them do.  It’s probably a trap.”

“You think?” Tony said snidely.

Fury shot him a glare.  “We don’t have a choice.  Everyone at stations.  Get whatever STRIKE personnel we have on board down to the bay immediately.  Barton, Stark, you’re with me.”  His eye narrowed into a scowl that had even Tony nervous.  “Let’s see what the good doctor has in store for us this time.”

* * *

They evacuated the interior flight bay as the quinjet landed.  It taxied forward just as a slew of STRIKE soldiers thundered inside, rifles raised.  Fury and Barton followed, the former armed with a handgun and the latter with his bow, and both were unwavering in their aim even though inside the jet were their friends and colleagues.  Ready inside Iron Man, Tony followed, powering the weapons in his palms and pointing those also at the jet.  He couldn’t help his pounding heart and shallow breaths.  This was messed up.  Badly.  He didn’t know Romanoff that well, and he hardly knew Hill at all, but he was pretty damn sure they’d never attack SHIELD willingly.  He was extremely worried for them.  And frankly he was sick of people getting hurt.

The jet rolled slowly, ominously, closer.  “Power down!” Fury cried over the open communications link with the quinjet.  It didn’t.  The roar of its engines was extremely loud in the cavernous flight bay.  Tony wasn’t sure what SHIELD regulations were, but he was fairly certain this far in the interior safety protocols dictated using a tug.  That didn’t bode well.  “Hill!  Power down now!  That’s an order!”

Suddenly the jet’s minigun descended from its belly, whirring to life.  “Get down!” someone shouted, and bullets peppered over the assembled force in rapid succession.  The STRIKE soldiers dove for cover behind crates and other supplies, unloading their guns at the jet.  Clint and Fury did the same, but most of their shots uselessly struck reinforced hull-plating.  Tony was the only one left in the barrage of bullets.  A minigun could damage Iron Man if he stood still in its direct path for long enough, but with the gun spraying in a wide arc, its shots were about as ineffective as theirs were. 

The bullets clanked uselessly against his chest plate as he moved closer.  “Armor is at 83%, sir,” JARVIS informed him.  Tony fired his palm repulsors, effortlessly taking out the minigun.  The smoldering remains thudded to the concrete floor of the flight bay, cut right from the bottom of the jet.  That didn’t stop whoever was piloting the craft from launching a damn missile right at him.  “Sir!”

Tony fired the thrusters in his boots and nimbly jumped to the left, barely avoiding the projectile careening at him.  It struck an idle jet behind them in an explosion that had most of the STRIKE Team scrambling for cover again.  “They’re not screwing around, are they,” Tony muttered as he regained his bearings.

“No.  I am not detecting any infrared signatures in either the pilot’s or the copilot’s seat,” JARVIS declared.  Tony glanced at the image on his HUD and saw that was true; the cockpit was dark.  That was both relieving and incredibly disturbing.  “There are two in the rear fuselage.  Neither is moving.”

“Shit,” Tony muttered.  “Fury, stand down!  Stand down!  Hill and Romanoff are in there and they’re unconscious!”

“Everybody, stop firing!” Fury bellowed, and immediately the soldiers ceased.  “Stark!”

Tony didn’t waste another second.  The infrared scanners in Iron Man were alerting him that another missile was being prepared.  He propelled forward, landed on the nose of the jet, and smashed through it with his fist.  Sure enough, inside the cockpit there was no one.  Quickly he scanned over the instrument panels, trying to figure out how the hell the jet was controlling itself.  Autopilot didn’t really cover this.  Autopilot couldn’t fake Maria Hill’s voice.  “J?  Talk to me.”

“There is an aberrant box of circuitry, sir.  Below the panel.  Left side.”

Tony hopped down inside the cockpit, following the diagram JARVIS was displaying for him.  There was a metal box attached under the flight console in front of the copilot’s chair.  The jet lurched and alarms wailed.  Another missile flew from it before Tony could do anything to stop it.  The bay shook with the impact.  There was fire and cries of pain.  “Damn it,” Tony hissed.  He reached under the panel and wrenched the box away, yanking and ripping wires in the process.  The quinjet immediately powered down.  “Bingo?”

“Not quite.  I believe there was a failsafe.”

“Damn it!”  He was moving quickly, ignoring the warnings blaring all over the HUD about what sure as hell looked like a bomb (and a large one at that) wired under the fuselage of the jet.  Iron Man’s scanners detected power racing toward the device.  “Everybody get out!” he hollered over the communications link.  “Get out!  Move!”

There was a flurry of panicked responses, some questions but mostly compliance, and he heard Fury shouting orders and Clint echoing them.  He couldn’t afford to be distracted by worry; JARVIS had quickly calculated the possible yield on an incendiary device of the size attached to the jet.  It wasn’t good.  “Sir–”

“I know!”  He staggered into the rear of the quinjet.  Hill and Romanoff were lying on the floor, their hands bound behind their backs and trussed to each other and the deck plating beneath them.  They were both out cold.  The HUD proclaimed they were alive at least, but Tony couldn’t spare more than a second to assure himself of that.  He activated the lasers in the gauntlet of his right hand, slicing through the chains securing the two women to the deck.

As fast as he was cutting, it wasn’t fast enough.  JARVIS was rarely panicked, but the voice resounding through his helmet was completely bereft of its normal cool equanimity.  _“Sir–”_

 _“I know!”_   The chains on Hill’s side fell away.  Tony stepped over her and immediately went to work on the set securing Natasha.  Neither of them so much as stirred, completely oblivious of the extreme danger they were all in.  The seconds he spent cutting were too long and too many.  Finally the chains broke, and he grabbed Natasha by her arm and hauled her up and over his shoulder.  One well-placed repulsor blast blew out the rear of the jet.  Then he snatched the collar of Hill’s uniform and fired the thrusters in his boots to get free.

And not a moment too soon.  The quinjet exploded behind him.  Tony gasped as the shock wave struck his back, throwing him across the bay.  It was much stronger than he’d anticipated, a ball of heat and force and destruction.  He twisted, trying to protect those he carried with his own body as much as possible as the detonation slammed over him.  Alarms wailed loudly and his HUD flashed red as he was pelted with debris.  He stabilized his flight with his boots just as he was about to slam into an unforgiving wall of crates.  The impact of a particularly large piece of wreckage (a chunk of the fuselage, he vaguely thought) knocked his trajectory to the left, and he turned at the last second to prevent himself from crushing Hill as he hit the floor.  He slid across it, fire sweeping over the top of him, and move fast to roll and pull Romanoff and Hill under him.  His heart was thundering.  The entirety of the helicarrier was shaking.

It didn’t seem like it would ever end, but it did.  Tony opened eyes he’d squeezed shut, tasting blood in his mouth from where his teeth had jabbed into his tongue during one of the many hits he’d taken.  He pushed himself up slowly, blackened debris sliding off his back.  Everything was burning and twisting with vertigo and shock, but he managed to regain his bearings.  Both Hill and Romanoff were still tucked beneath them.  “Natasha?” he called, rolling Black Widow to her back.  She wasn’t hurt; the HUD flickered as JARVIS brought up a quick diagram of her body with relevant vital signs.  Hill, on the other hand, had taken a rather nasty blow to the head.  Her pulse was weaker, and her blood pressure was low.  “Hill?  Hill, can you hear me?”  He leaned back.  “I need help here!  I need – holy shit.”

The entire forward section of the bay was _gone_.  It was as if a giant hand had reached inside and grabbed the concrete and steel and iron and violently ripped it all out.  It was like it had been _gutted_.  The doors had totally disappeared, the gnarled, burnt remains of steel grasping the sky like twisted fingers.  The floor surrounding the front was blown away, dozens and dozens of feet of once solid surface missing, revealing the sparkling blue of the ocean below and drifting wisps of clouds.  The jets and helicopters and supplies and equipment that had been there were lost.  Everywhere things were burning, and inky, oily smoke was spilling through the gaping wound and out into the sky.  The helicarrier shuddered, moaning a pained cry.  Tony’s HUD was flooding with information, with analyses of structural stability and damage reports and warnings, and he floundered to process it all.

“Nat!”  He heard Clint and turned.  The archer was further back, his face blackened with soot but otherwise okay.  His eyes were wide with terror.  He was flanked by the STRIKE Team.  “Stark!”

The floor quaked beneath him and a huge crack suddenly shot beneath his body.  Tony lurched into motion, not speaking or thinking or even breathing, as he grabbed the two SHIELD agents under him and staggered up to his feet.  He flung himself away, nearly colliding with a sliding pile of crates and the forklift that followed it, as the floor tipped.  Concrete broke apart and was pulverized to dust.  Iron bars bent, and a second later the section of the bay where he’d been laying was falling into the ocean below.

Tony swallowed his thundering heart back down from his throat and fought not to seem as shaken as he was.  He landed beside Clint, setting both Natasha and Hill to more solid ground.  Fury was there, bleeding from a fairly serious cut above his brow.  He pushed his hand to his ear piece.  “Sitwell!  Report!”

“Engine Three is malfunctioning!” came the harried response.  “The explosion knocked out power to it!”

“Can you compensate?” Fury asked, looking worriedly at Stark.  Tony stood taller as the STRIKE Team and Clint flooded over the two unconscious women, preparing to fly straight out the huge hole behind them and do whatever was necessary to deal with the problem.  He was the only one who could.  The deck beneath them vibrated again as the helicarrier struggled with the damage done to it.  “Answer me, Sitwell!”

Sitwell’s answer seemed to take forever to come.  “Yes, we’ve got it.  Backup systems are coming online.”  Tony breathed a sigh of relief, glancing back at the destruction behind them.  Terrifying was an understatement.  _Jesus. Talk about a Trojan horse._ Tony supposed they’d been lucky.  The flight bay was in the rear of the helicarrier and towards its bottom, but mostly away from its engines and its reactor.  An explosion like this occurring somewhere else would have been crippling.  “Emergency teams are en route to you.  Sir, I suggest you get out of there.  The entire section is structurally compromised and could go at any second!”

“What the hell is that?”

Clint’s softly asked question drew their attention.  He was kneeling over Natasha, trying to prod her to awareness, when he pulled his hands away and looked down at her chest.  Tony came back to him, dropping to his knee beside the fallen agent.  Immediately he saw what Clint had, what he hadn’t seen during the panicked minutes before this one.  There was a black vest of some sort around Natasha’s chest.  Around the lower section was a series of tubes, perhaps a dozen in all and each about four inches long and half an inch in diameter.  They ran perpendicular to the bottom edge of the vest, and each had a thick black wire that climbed up the vest before disappearing underneath it near the top of the zipper below Natasha’s collarbone.

Tony leaned back, unwilling to touch it because it sure as hell looked like a bomb.  He glanced over to his left where the STRIKE Team was hovering over Agent Hill.  She, too, was dressed in a vest.  “J?” he asked softly.

“Sir, there is a piece of paper folded in the pocket of Agent Romanoff’s vest,” JARVIS said.

Clint had already spotted the white edge.  He reached down and pulled it free with uncertain fingers.  Unfolding it, he read aloud, “I present Doctor Rappaccini’s newest strain.  Treat it with care.  Signed S. Sterns.”

Tony’s dismay was quickly morphing into outright panic.  “What the hell is inside those?” he demanded.  “JARVIS!”

“Unknown, sir.  If I had to hazard a guess–”

“Hazard it, damn it!”

Tony’s blood ran cold at the chemical compound appearing before his eyes, glowing red and white on the HUD.  “Oh, my God.  Everybody, get back!  Get away from them!”  The STRIKE Team didn’t move for a second, confused and alarmed.  Iron Man turned and regarded them with malicious eyes.  “Get the hell back!”

“What is it, Tony?” Clint demanded breathlessly.

“Anthrax.  And I’m guessing the super deadly kind.”  He said this without a bit of mirth.  “Get out of here, Clint.  Go, now!”

“Not on your life,” Clint snarled.  “How do we disarm it?”

“The wires are connected to a detonator.  It has been surgically implanted in Agent Romanoff’s abdominal cavity,” JARVIS said softly, gravely.  “There is another inside Agent Hill.”

 _Oh, God._   “We can’t.  The detonators are _inside_ them.”

Clint blanched and his eyes widened in horror.  Tony shook his head.  He felt more than saw Fury coming up behind him.  “Fury, get your people out of here.  _Now._ ”  At that moment the emergency responders and medics were streaming inside the damaged flight bay.  They would quickly become more victims.  “We need to clear out!  Everybody!”  Fury thankfully didn’t argue.  He nodded, standing to his full height despite the blood coating his face.  He was bellowing orders, shouting that the bay be evacuated again.  The STRIKE Team pulled back, some limping and others carried, helped by the medics.  “You!” Tony snapped at one of the doctors.  “Bag.  Now.”

The white-faced woman left her duffel full of supplies next to Tony before scurrying away.  Clint was warily reaching for Natasha’s vest.  He grasped the zipper in its center and carefully tugged it down.  He clearly wanted to do it slowly, but his hands were shaking and his patience was wavering.  When the zipper was down, he opened the vest.

There was some sort of battery pack inside, sewn into the left side of the article.  It was small, but there was a digital clock on it counting down five minutes.  The wires went into it, and from it wires went underneath a reddened bandage wrapped around Natasha’s middle.  Her uniform had been cut away.  Clint didn’t waste a second, grabbing the scissors Tony had procured from the doctor’s emergency kit and sawing through the bandage.  As Tony had hoped from Iron Man’s scans, the detonator was small, maybe half the size of a cell phone and close to the surface.

But they had less than five minutes.

_Five minutes._

And Hill had one of these godawful things embedded into her, too.

“What do we do?” Clint asked breathlessly.  Tony knew he was typically so grounded and cool, but he’d seen a lot of Clint frightened and rattled in the last few days.  This was the worst.  “Stark, what do we do?”

“Just hold on!” Tony snapped.  He reached over and grabbed Hill’s boots and pulled her closer.  His brain was shocked into such a stupor for a minute that all he could think about was how lucky they were that these vials full of poison hadn’t ruptured during the explosion a few minutes ago.  With Iron Man’s thick gauntlets, he couldn’t handle the small zipper, so Clint did that while he frantically tried to gather his wits and looked through the information JARVIS was feeding him.  The external circuit seemed simple enough; each of the tubes containing the poison was on a single switch, powered by the battery and wired to the control mechanism inside them.  “Can you tell me anything about what’s inside?”

“I wish, sir, but the apparatus is shielded.  You will need to remove them from Agent Romanoff and Agent Hill,” JARVIS explained.

Tony had been afraid of that.  “It looks simple enough.  I suppose cutting the main wire to the detonator would be bad.”

“I cannot detect any evidence of a failsafe, but I failed to detect the one in the jet if you recall.”  Tony did recall.  The evidence of it was pretty huge and disturbing.  “I would not recommend it.  Unfortunately, the safest course of action is to remove the devices before defusing them.  Considering the time constraints–”

“We gotta cut them out,” Tony announced to Clint.  “Now.”

Clint turned even whiter underneath the soot on his face.  “Wh-what?”

“We need to cut them out,” Tony said.  “I can’t disarm them like this.  They’re near the skin, so I think we can do it without causing too much damage.”  Thankfully Clint didn’t need more of an explanation than that.  He scrambled on his knees over to the doctor’s bag, dumping the contents and pawning rapidly through them until he found a scalpel.  Then he was back at Natasha’s side, uncapping it and grabbing some bandages.  His hands only shook for the first second as he started cutting.  Sweat rolled down his face as he worked, but his eyes were narrowed and he was calm.  Natasha moaned and he paused for a second before continuing onward.  A painful wound to the gut was infinitely better than a chest full of Anthrax.

Tony sucked a breath in between his teeth.  He turned to Maria, adjusting the lasers on his right gauntlet until they were as narrowly confined as possible.  Then he, too, went to work.  It was hard to concentrate and not let it get it him.  And JARVIS had put the countdown from the timer on his HUD, which wasn’t helping his nerves.  “Like I said, this has been a freaking raw deal for us from the beginning,” he said.  “You and me.  It’s been one disaster after another.  First I get shot and you get shot and we get used as leverage against our friends.  Then Rogers blows up the top of my tower and we had to watch him go crazy, which sucked.  And then you and I got stuck with trying to stop a bunch of evil kidnappers.  And then you got shot with deadly super sedative and I had to send Banner off on in some ill-fated attempt to fix something that can’t be fixed.  And now this.  Now we get to reenact a scene from _Saw_.  Bullshit, from start to finish.  Really and truly.”

“Yeah,” Clint gasped.

“No one’s dying.  Not today,” Tony swore.  _No one._

Natasha moaned hoarsely.  “Easy, Nat,” Clint soothed.  “Almost got it.”  But she didn’t stop struggling.  Tony could hardly spare a glance from Maria.  There were only two minutes left now.  “Nat!  Lie still!”  But Natasha didn’t.  She jerked.  Tony could see from her vitals that she was coming around.  _Shit._   “Nat!  Stop!  Stop!”

She came awake with a gasp and a cry, pushing Clint away with shaking hands.  As Tony finished cutting the detonator out of Maria’s stomach, he could hardly spare the seconds to watch Clint struggling to restrain Natasha and control the bleeding.  Thankfully Hill was still out cold.  He tried not to see the blood (and he was thankful, with the way his head was already spinning and his stomach was clenched in misery, that he couldn’t feel it or smell it) as he pulled the small box out and away.  He pressed bandages over the wounds he’d made, though with the laser they were smaller and bleeding less profusely.

The counter was at less than a minute now.  There was no time.  Tony fumbled to open the container of the detonator.  He heard Natasha pushing away from Clint, heard her desperately asking what was happening and Clint trying to answer her just as desperately.  Panic pulsed over him, sharp and driving, as he looked over the insides of the detonator.  JARVIS dissected the wiring even faster than he did.  He was so flustered that he could barely think, and there was no time to, at any rate.

Thirty seconds.

“Stark!” Clint shouted, trying still to get his hands on Natasha who was scooting further and further away from him.  Her eyes were open now, open and wide with abject terror.  It was a look Tony had never seen on Black Widow’s face, not even during the darkest moments during the Battle of New York, and he’d never imagined it would be so _wrong_ and disturbing.  Any doubt that she was unaware of what was strapped around her body was dashed by her clumsy attempts to get away.  “Nat, no!  _Nat!_ ”

“Get away from me, Clint!  _Get away!_ ”

Tony needed to concentrate.  _Looks simple enough.  Could it really be?  Shit.  What if it’s not?  We all die._

“What are you doing?  Natasha!  Come back here!”  She was on her feet now, clumsy and staggering with her hands still bound behind her back.    No!  _No!_ ”

Fifteen seconds.  _No time to figure it out.  No time.  Have to do it._ Tony grabbed the wire into the device with amazing dexterity considering the thick metal encasing his fingers.  There was only one option.  It was this or nothing.  But he couldn’t make himself do it.  _No time.  Have to do it.  God, help me.  If I’m wrong…  Have to do it!_

“I’m not gonna let you die!”

Ten seconds.  Warnings flashed on his HUD at which he couldn’t even glance.  Warnings about the floor destabilizing.

“Nat, please!  Get away from the edge!  _Nat!  Don’t!”_

He closed his eyes and yanked the wire loose.  The battery immediately shut off, the timer disappearing with only five seconds left.  It didn’t go off.  _It didn’t go off_.

“Pull the goddamn wire!” he shouted.

Clint tore horrified eyes to Tony.  “What?”

_“Just pull it!”_

Clint lunged at Natasha.  He got his arms around her, even as she struggled toward the edge of the hole and the sky beyond.  She was going to jump to try and save them.  She was going to sacrifice herself to save them.  Tony watched, unable to do _anything_ , as they fought for a second, her to escape him and him to reach her.  But Clint won in the end.  He got his hand on the wire running from the detonator to the vest and viciously ripped it loose.  The vials remained intact.

But it didn’t matter.  The floor broke and tipped beneath them and they were too close to the edge.

_“No!”_

In a blink the deck was gone.  So were Clint and Natasha.

Tony panicked.  Outright and without reserve.  He pulled Maria back as far and as quickly as he could, back from the unsteady and widening gap, and when he was certain (at least fairly) that she was safe, he lurched to the air and shot through the hole and toward his teammates.

They were already so far down, spinning and tumbling and plummeting, that he could hardly see them.  The sky and smoke were spiraling above and the ocean was twisting below as Tony threw every bit of energy he could into Iron Man’s thrusters and rocketed straight down.  _Faster._   The HUD flashed with warnings, with the distance between him and them.  It was shrinking rapidly but not rapidly enough.  They were going to hit the water before he caught them.  _Faster!_

There was the flash of something on his radar, something moving at supersonic speeds, and it cut through the air below them and suddenly Clint and Natasha disappeared.

No.  They were _flying_.

That something shot straight up in the air, carrying both SHIELD agents as it boomed past him and back into the sky.  Tony reacted quickly to divert his course.  The breaking thrusters in his suit fired long and hard, and he was climbing.  He chased that blur into the clouds, that blur that rocketed back toward the helicarrier and banked hard to the left to fly over the top of it.  Tony followed, matching its course.  And then he landed hard on the flight deck of the helicarrier, cracking it beneath his boots.

Thor lowered Mjölnir and set Clint down gently, Clint who still held Natasha desperately to his chest and Natasha who was panting and trembling and looking around with wide, shocked eyes.  The God of Thunder turned and beheld Iron Man, who was shaking his head in absolute awe and all-consuming relief.  “Nice catch,” he said.  “Now excuse me while I throw up.”

Thor reached over to grasp Tony’s shoulder and smiled.  “That sounds rather unpleasant.”

“Tell me about it.”

* * *

As it turned out, the media attention the hostage situation and subsequent debacle at Stark Tower had received was a good thing.  News agencies across the globe were speculating like mad, spurting nonsense in an unending flurry and a constant stream of the same inconclusive footage.  This was, after all, the first hint of the Avengers assembling after New York, and everyone was scrambling for a piece of it, their fans and detractors alike.  The public was eating the coverage up, and the tabloids were buzzing with rumors about the love lives of Captain America and Iron Man and the pundits were chattering with talk of SHIELD and Rogers’ affiliation with it and what this could mean for the country if the Avengers were together again.  People with half a brain had realized the attack on Stark Tower had not been something so stupid and inane as a lover’s quarrel, and they were justifiably worried that something somewhere had come after their heroes.  Or that something somewhere was threatening the planet, since the last time the Avengers had been together an alien invasion had nearly overrun midtown Manhattan.  It was a minor miracle that the media didn’t know more about what had happened than that, that they hadn’t pieced together the massive manhunt with the incident in New York and connected the dots.  It was also a minor miracle that Thor, Prince of Asgard and Avenger himself, happened to catch the footage of Steve stopping the bank robbers and the top of Stark Tower exploding.  And he had made the connection.

Fury had directed the helicarrier to land in the harbor outside New York City after the damage to the landing bay had been properly contained by watertight bulkheads.  Repairs were already underway.  There was nothing left of the quinjet to analyze, but Tony had suggested that the control mechanism AIM had implanted in the jet had allowed them to remote pilot it.  The bomb had been hidden from their scans by an electrically shielded casing until it had been too late.  That control device had even been fitted with recordings of Hill’s voice to complete the illusion.  And the amount of highly aerosolized and highly potent Anthrax in those vests would have been enough to contaminate most of the carrier, considering its closed environment.  Hundreds of people would have been killed.  AIM had meant business, to cripple the helicarrier or even destroy it.  How close they’d come to that end was disturbing.  Horrifying, really, and everyone was shaken.

Now the team was gathered on the bridge, as recovered and composed as possible.  Tony watched Natasha; he didn’t usually admit to outright concern for other people, but he was afraid for her.  She looked ill and deeply unsettled.  She was pale, her face drained of color and her eyes drained of vigor.  After Tony had helped in removing the vests from both her and Hill, the SHIELD doctors had looked her over thoroughly.  Aside from the trauma of what had happened, she was okay.  Hill was in worse shape because of the concussion and was still unconscious.  The doctors had finished excising the detonator from Natasha’s body and had bandaged her and sent her on her way to rest.  She’d refused and come with Clint to the bridge.  Fury was watching her worriedly as well, and he was not making any effort to hide it.  “Is there anything you can tell us?”

Natasha’s eyes were ringed in weariness.  She looked emptily at the conference table.  Her normally proud and stoic form was crushed and slumped.  “No,” she said softly, as though ashamed.  She probably was.  Ashamed at having been taken by the enemy.  Ashamed at having been used.  Ashamed at having been weak (even if that was nonsense and no one blamed her in the least bit).  Ashamed at having threatened her colleagues and friends.  “I…  I can’t remember a thing.  The last thing that’s clear is Sterns baiting you.”  She looked to Clint apologetically.  “I’m sorry.”

Fury was frustrated, though not at his agent.  “Nothing about where you flew Sterns?  About where you were?” he questioned, unwilling to admit to another dead end.

Natasha was honestly trying to think.  A pained looked crossed her face.  She shook her head.  Clint clasped her shoulder in a friendly show of support and forgiveness.

“Damn it,” Fury hissed.

“So you mean to tell me that this Leader of scientists has taken our captain and we have no recourse?” Thor said.  His muscular arms were folded across his chest, and he looked grim.  After the immediate threat had been resolved, Tony had attempted to explain to the wayward God of Thunder everything that had happened over the past few weeks.  He’d quickly told the tale, his own riled emotions fueling fast and sharp words, and Thor had only grown more irritated and confused with talk of serums and genetic mutations and Gamma radiation until Clint had simplified it to “Steve’s been captured by the bad guys and they want to turn him against us”.  That was all Thor had needed to hear.  “And Banner has gone to help these monsters?  This Doctor Rappaccini?”

“He’s gone to try and cure Rogers,” Tony clarified.  He tried not to sound doubtful about that, either about Bruce’s motivations or chances.

Thor looked from Tony to Fury.  “I did not simply come because I saw the disaster in New York.  My lady Jane heard of SHIELD’s hunt for this Rappaccini this morning.  I apologize for the delay but we were–”

“Wait, she knows Rappaccini?” Tony asked.

Thor looked to him, as if judging if he meant anything more by the question.  “She requested we initiate something called a video chat with her once I arrived.  She gave me this number.”  The demigod reached into his vest and produced a slip of paper.  He handed it to Fury, who in turn gave it to Sitwell with a firm nod.  Thor looked sadly upon them, on Natasha’s pale face and Clint’s obvious worry and exhaustion and Tony’s desperation to _do_ something.  “I am truly sorry I have not been here to help.  After the incident in England, Jane advised we move to a more… remote location to avoid what she termed as a media frenzy.  She wished to ‘lay low’, as she put it.”  Thor looked around, and he seemed a tad bit wary, like he was trying to assure himself of something.  Probably that SHIELD was trustworthy.  Tony had a feeling Selvig and Foster were not the spy organization’s greatest fans.  Not many people seemed to be.  “But I am here now.  And we will save our friends.”  It was spoken like someone who truly had no idea what they were up against, who didn’t _see_ Steve stop the Hulk and destroy the top half of Stark Tower and hurt people with his mind.  But Tony still felt relieved.  Thor was strong, maybe as strong or even stronger than the Hulk, and nearly invincible.  Something told him they’d need as much of that kind of power as possible.

A moment later the video feeds in the conference table came alive with a blank screen and green icon indicating a call had been initiated.  Shortly after that, Jane Foster’s image came to life.  “I am here, Jane,” Thor called, moving closer to the table so that she could see him.

Tony had never met Foster before, but he knew of her work.  She and Erik Selvig were two of the top minds in the world on astrophysics and quantum mechanics.  She was young and pretty, delicate seeming, but something told Tony she was anything but to be in love with a Norse demigod.  “Thor, are the Avengers with you?”

“What’s left of them,” Tony said.  He nodded at Foster.  “Doctor.”

“Mr. Stark, it’s nice to finally meet you.”  She offered a somewhat flustered grin.

“Likewise.”

“Doctor Foster, please, if you have something to tell us about Doctor Rappaccini, we need to hear it,” Fury said.  Foster had met the SHIELD Director before if the tight frown of distrust and disappointment appearing on her face was any indication.  Tony wondered if she’d meant for Thor to relay her message to only the Avengers.  Fury clearly thought the same thing.  He was trying to be patient, probably realizing that at this point cooperation was about all they had to make any of this work.  “People’s lives are at risk.”

“Is that why you’re looking for her?” she asked.  The question seemed completely ignorant, but Tony realized after a quick glance with Clint that that was because it was.  Nobody knew the truth outside of SHIELD.

Until now.  “She kidnapped Captain America,” Fury supplied without hesitation.  “He’s been exposed to a chemical that has made him extremely powerful and extremely dangerous.  We need to find him.”

Foster was smart.  If she truly knew Rappaccini, then she was undoubtedly aware of her expertise in genetics and biochemistry.  That was all she needed to put two and two together.  “I haven’t seen her in more than a year, but…  Well, she was one of the reasons I relocated to Europe.”

“One of the reasons?” Tony asked in puzzlement.

Foster smiled weakly.  “The other being SHIELD.”

 _Figures._   If Fury was at all troubled by that, he didn’t show it.  “What did she do?” he asked.

“Nothing, really.  She approached me about joining some company called Advanced Idea Mechanics.  She said with my background in physics and my knowledge of… well, Asgard, I could be a valuable asset to them.  I have to admit I was interested.  After you guys interfered with my research, I was in need of funding.  And a new lab.  But… she was desperate and sort of creepy.  I don’t know.  It just felt wrong, even though some of the things they were working on were pretty exciting.  She showed me some of their projects trying to get my input.  She even took me on a tour of one of their buildings.”

Tony jolted forward in his chair.  “Where?” he demanded.  “In New Mexico?  That’s where your lab was, right?”

Foster looked perplexed.  “Yes, but how did you–”

“Agent Sitwell, can you get my map over to her?” Tony asked, looking down at the SHIELD agent.  He nodded and spoke quietly with one of the techs.  “Take a look at this.  It’s a bunch of possible locations.  If where you went isn’t on there, I’ll need whatever you can tell me about it.”

“It was over a year ago, so I don’t–”

“Please.  This is all we’ve got at this point.”  And Tony wasn’t about to let it slip away.  It was the best lead they’d had since Steve’s abduction.  It was the _only_ one, really.  And if Jane had actually been to the place where they were holding Steve…

Jane was working on her laptop because her eyes weren’t focused on the camera anymore.  They were quickly scouring over the data Tony had sent her.  The group assembled on the bridge was silent again, waiting for her to confirm or deny that they were on the right track.  “It’s gotta be this one,” she said.  She brought the map up on the displays, circling one dot that was buried deep in the northern part of New Mexico near Carson National Forest.

Sitwell worked fast after she’d identified the installation.  The techs were rushing through data, and suddenly a slew of satellite images appeared on the displays.  Tony could hardly believe this had actually worked out.  Of course, this was no proof that Steve was actually at this location.  But the odds seemed likely.  Fury and Clint realized it as well, and the room suddenly buzzed with excitement and activity.  “Thank you, Doctor Foster,” Fury said.  “You have no idea how much of a help you’ve been.”

Foster might have been reticent in helping SHIELD track down someone she might have at one time considered a colleague, but she beamed momentarily at their genuine gratitude.  “Can I speak with Thor for a moment?  Privately.”

Sitwell transferred the call to a tablet and handed the huge demigod the small device.  He looked uncertain for a moment before stepping to a quieter corner of the bridge to speak with his lover.  In the meantime, Tony was flying through the data the techs were feeding them.  Satellite imaging showed it to be a fairly large place (though with the forest of tall pines tightly surrounding it, the images were not as useful as he’d hoped).  Infrared also indicated a large heat signature, possibly a reactor (which was what had landed this place on Tony’s list in the first place).  Other than that, though, there was hardly any data on the building, whatever it was, and that was indication in and of itself that they had something to hide.  Maybe it wasn’t much more than a hunch that this was where AIM had taken Steve, but he felt certain of it. 

Thor finished with Foster, and he appraised their group evenly.  “Why are we waiting?” he asked.  “Let us go to this location and find our captain.  We will make these scientists pay for the damage they have done to us.”

Tony was about to agree whole-heartedly, but Clint’s soft voice spoke before he could.  “If Banner went to help, maybe…  Maybe we should let him.”  He looked lost.  Frightened.  Like he suddenly didn’t know what to do, even if they finally had a chance to do something.  Like he wasn’t sure SHIELD or any of them were equipped to fix this problem.  If they went in there, _rushed_ in there, they didn’t know what they’d find.  And if Sterns already had his hands on Steve, in Steve’s head…  Tony had said it before, and it was still true.  The only way to fix this was a cure.  “Sir, you said the Council was prepared to issue orders you didn’t want to follow.”

Fury didn’t answer.  “Mobilize the STRIKE Team,” he called to Sitwell.  “Pull as many soldiers as we can in on this from wherever you can get them.  Coordinate with the National Guard and local law enforcement.  I want to be on the ground out there in thirty minutes or less.  Low exposure.  Eyes and ears need to be on _every_ part of this building.”  Sitwell nodded.  All around the bridge was a frantic flurry of activity.  Fury continued in his instructions, calling over the din.  Everyone was listening to his commanding voice.  In light of what had happened, they all needed the strength and confidence of someone in control.  “We need air support, as much as possible.  And I want the Avengers to lead the assault.  No chances.  We take out AIM and rescue Rogers and Banner.  If they have an army, we bring an army of our own.”

Clint shook his head and stood.  “Sir–”

Fury appraised his agent with anger again.  “You can’t possibly be suggesting we let AIM continue to have the upper hand.”  Tony wasn’t sure that was what Clint was suggesting at all.  The incident with Natasha had shaken him deeply.  Clint had been so steadfast, so certain that they needed to find and save Steve.  Now he wasn’t sure, and that brought all of Tony’s doubts into sharp focus again.  Doubts about SHIELD.  Doubts about Rogers and how much he could withstand.  “Get yourselves ready.  I need all of you on this.  If we have a chance to end this now, we need to take it.  We can deal with the consequences later.”

Tony wasn’t satisfied with that.  “And what if we can’t?  What the hell were those orders?”

Fury deflated.  It was a slow thing, a subtle thing, but none of the Avengers were fooled.  He turned from his agents on the bridge, turned to hide his _defeat,_ and averted his gaze to the smooth, gleaming surface of the conference table.  “The Council is not willing to risk Rogers becoming a threat to humanity.”

“And?” Thor prompted.

“They want containment,” Fury said quietly.  “By any means necessary.”

Tony shook his head.  “And if containment isn’t possible?”

Fury didn’t look at him.  At any of them.  At least, not at first.  Then he raised his head, and his face was stern and emotionless.  It was the face of a spy and a leader and the Director of SHIELD.  It was the face of a man prepared to make difficult decisions, terrible decisions, to follow orders no matter the cost.  It was the face of a man who knew what was at stake.  “Termination,” he said quietly, evenly, “by any means necessary.”

Thor was surprised and angry.  Clint wasn’t.  Neither was Tony.  They’d certainly known that that was where this was headed.  Hell, Tony had known it from the get-go.  The first thing that had stampeded through his mind when Steve had shorted out the Tower and nearly killed Pepper was that if the wrong people got their hands on him, the results would be catastrophic.  And that thought had stayed there, a constant companion, a constant _worry_ , through all of these traumatic events.  He’d done his best not to think about it or acknowledge it, to put faith (a lot of faith) in their ability to fix this before it ever got to that point.  But that point was rapidly approaching, it seemed.  Fury was saying, outright confessing, that if Sterns turned Steve against them, all of SHIELD would be sent to stop him.  Hearing that made his worry undeniable and real.  If they couldn’t bring Steve back, they were going to have to kill him.

Tony swallowed through a dry throat.  _Whatever you’re going to do, Bruce, do it.  Hurry._


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Well, thanks everyone for reading and reviewing! This has officially become my longest Avengers story. Didn't plan for it to get this huge. At any rate, we're moving towards the end now (as you probably have noticed – things can't get too much worse).
> 
> A quick note on the Hulk and his powers: I'm not too into the idea that any character's powers are limitless. That doesn't make for a very exciting story (in my opinion because what villain could ever stand up against that and pose a real threat?). I'm sticking more with the MCU take on the Hulk, which has shown him to be pretty much way above and beyond anyone except Thor, but not necessarily completely unstoppable (a bunch of Chitauri shooting at him brought him down for a while, anyway). Also, I'm going with the interpretation that Bruce has some control over him when he's out and can therefore "hold him back" (to some extent, which he wants to do, because nobody wants to hurt Steve – which has been his primary reason for holding the Hulk back all along).
> 
> Also, a little warning on this chapter for mentions of past child abuse and just plain unpleasantness. Evilness, I guess. Good guys getting pushed toward the dark side. Don't worry; they push back. Enjoy!

Steve was dying.

Not so much in body (though that was languishing as well) but in mind.  Bruce had never seen anything quite like it.  In India, he’d witnessed many sick people suffering, ill people barely clinging to life.  People suffering through pneumonia, malaria, and tuberculosis.  People whose brains were shutting down from infection, from raging fevers, from meningitis.  He’d seen some sad things, some cruel things, people fighting for each breath in their last moments, people begging and pleading with ghosts and phantoms for mercy or another chance or anything to stop the pain.  And he’d tried to help.  He’d done everything he could to help, both because it had been the right thing to do and because he was trying (perhaps in vain) to find some semblance of absolution after everything that had happened to him.  But this…  This was beyond compare.

And he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do.  Absolution, it seemed, was sadly out of reach.

Steve had awoken a few hours ago.  Since then he’d floated between consuming delirium, _raging_ delirium, and complete catatonia.  During his bouts of madness, his mind was moving so _fast_ that Bruce couldn’t follow what he was saying or dreaming or thinking.  Bruce caught words about the war, about his childhood, about SHIELD, but he really couldn’t put it together.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to.  He watched Steve shiver and mindlessly flail and re-enact memories and struggle against nightmares.  It was like his mind was tearing itself apart, and from the cracks and crevices the substance of his life was spilling in a flood.  Bruce felt wretched bearing witness to this, to Steve’s innermost thoughts and fears and recollections, but there wasn’t any choice.  He wasn’t going to leave.

Monica had offered him a room in this place (wherever the hell they were) to rest and do his work in silence and comfort, but he’d flat-out refused.  She’d been irate with that (she was irate with everything, it seemed).  Clearly she had had some fantasy about this, with Bruce working at her side, with them laboring together to figure this out.  Two veritable powerhouses in the fields of biochemistry and genetics striving together to solve one of the greatest scientific mysteries of their times.  She was crazy, and it wasn’t going to happen.  He had mountains of data.  They both did.  And he knew with her help, he could go through it faster and more accurately.  With her help, maybe they could deduce how the super soldier serum worked.  But he wasn’t going to work with her.  Not if it meant Steve’s sanity or Steve’s life.  Not to build some sort of awful weapon.  Not even if it produced the answers to his own questions.  So he had stayed put, even though it was difficult to think with Steve crying and with the room shaking and with the constant barrage of misery.  He was here for Steve.  He wasn’t here for the science, and he wasn’t here for himself.  He was here for Steve.

He just didn’t know what to do.  He’d always had such faith in research and in the measurable, quantifiable, and explainable ways in which the world worked.  He’d had such faith in himself, too, and his ability to unravel the physical nature of things and understand them and manipulate them as necessary.  But there was something at work here that he couldn’t comprehend.  He’d been suspicious of it earlier, but it was becoming more and more undeniable.  The man was not separable from the serum.  Monica wasn’t going to be able to shut the serum off or even suppress it without killing Steve.  And there was _no way_ to extract it.  Bruce had gone over it again and again, wracking his mind, looking for something he’d missed.  He’d been so confident that there had to be something, and he clung to it.  But there wasn’t.  Steve and the super soldier serum were bonded together in ways that couldn’t be understood, much less broken.  What Monica wanted was impossible.

And when she’d last come to speak with him, he’d tried to convince her of that.  He’d begged her to change her mind, to realize that this was a dream that would never come to fruition.  He’d told her again that the Dan’s drug and Erskine’s serum were not compatible, that this was headed toward an explosion that would not only kill her subject but all of them.  He’d asked her to help him find a way to stop the mutations, to stabilize this before it got out of control.  Dan’s drug was toxic, and it was destroying everything that made Steve who and what he was.  _Captain America.  A good man.  The best of humanity._ It was contaminating every part of him it touched.  His memories.  His thoughts.  His dreams and his mind.  Bruce didn’t know if he believed in things like souls and spirits and the essence of a man’s heart.  He never used to.  But he was starting to now.  He was starting to recognize that there were forces at work here beyond DNA chains mutating and proteins twisting out of shape and chemicals reacting violently.  He was starting to think that if Lahey’s drug beat down the serum enough, all that would remain would be a nightmare unlike any other.

Worst of all, he was starting to think that was what Sterns wanted.  Monica wanted a serum she could pick apart and understand and replicate.  She wanted scientific validation and the power that came from it.  She wanted a weapon that she could box up and use.  She didn’t see that Sterns didn’t care at all about that.  Sterns wanted what would be left in Steve Rogers’ body when his soul died.  A demon tortured and bent with pain and more powerful than anyone could imagine.  A monster.

The Hulk was uneasy in the back of his mind.

So he kept working, even though he knew it was fruitless.  A tiny voice drove him, whispering that this was up to him.  He was Steve’s only hope.  He had to find a way to stabilize this, to stop this, to at least create more time because he wasn’t willing to do what he’d promised.  He wasn’t willing to give up or admit this couldn’t be solved.  That _he_ couldn’t solve it.  And he wasn’t willing to kill Steve.  He could do it now, if he wanted.  He realized with each shallow beat of his heart and each moment he watched Steve struggle against what seemed to be inevitability that the smart thing to do, the responsible thing to do, would be to kill him now.  The Hulk was shifting, waiting, eager to end this.  Steve was weak, and he was out of his mind.  He wasn’t aware enough to fight.  If Bruce moved fast enough or tricked him again…  It would take a single shot of dendrotoxin to knock him down and out and then he wouldn’t even need the Hulk to smother him or even just overdose him…  _God, no.  I won’t.  I won’t do it._   It wasn’t right.  Maybe logic dictated it was the safest course, the wisest course, but it wasn’t right.  Steve had taught him a thing or two about doing the right thing no matter the cost.

But Steve had also asked him to kill him if it came to it.  It was coming to it.  It was coming fast.

_Keep working._

_No, kill him.  You’d be doing him a favor.  He’s suffering.  He’s lost.  Put him out of his misery.  And salvage what you can.  Take the data and run, Banner._   His own monster.  The baser instincts.  _Those aren’t my thoughts!_   Or were they?  God, he was tired.  He started to wonder if Steve wasn’t the only one going crazy.

He pulled himself together.  Somehow, he did.  Minutes felt like hours, hours he couldn’t afford to lose.  And he couldn’t afford to have thoughts and doubts like these.  He raked his hands through his hair, looking anew at the test results, running simulations through his mind that would take a computer hours to complete.  Every chemical compound he’d used in his own research raced through his head.  He mentally tested them all, even the ones he knew were long-shots.  There wasn’t time to do anything more formal.  Frustration bent his form and made his head pound and his heart ache.  His mind started to wander as he lost his focus and his hope that he could fix this.  What were they waiting for?  Sterns and Rappaccini.  Why these hours of relative peace?  Were they really just giving him a chance to figure this out?  Or were they waiting for Steve to recover?  Or for Steve to get worse?  He very much feared the latter answer was right.  Under his anger and bitterness, he knew what Sterns was doing.  He was waiting for Dan’s drug to do its job.  He looked at Steve, who was huddled again in the corner of the cell, shivering and sobbing.  Bruce could see dust all around him, dust from broken tiles and smashed drywall, dust held in the air by him.  It filled the room, never settling though gravity should have brought it down long ago.  It was like a cloud of glittering particles, random and beautiful and oddly peaceful.  Like stars.  Like molecules and atoms and the substance of the universe.  _Waxing poetic.  Just take the data and go._

Steve had his head buried on his arms and his arms folded over his knees and his knees drawn up to his chest.  He looked so young, like a little boy.  Bruce gritted his teeth as he watched him cry.  Bastards.  All of them.  _What are you waiting for?  Just put a damn stop this already.  Son of a bitch._   _What the hell are you waiting for?_   He wasn’t sure if he was angrier at Sterns or at himself for not just _ending_ this.

Bruce couldn’t stand the sound of Steve’s halting breaths and soft weeping anymore.  He was frustrated and eager to do something other than uselessly battle his own mind.  So he stood and grabbed the bottle of water on his desk and went over to his friend, intending to force some sense into him, at least to demand he be quiet so he could _think_ , but when he saw Steve’s devastated body, all of his contempt and uncertainty disappeared.  Guilt came over him, cold and cruel.  _Why am I waiting?  Why?_ He didn’t have a good explanation other than fear.  “Steve?  Can I sit with you?”  The bent and tortured form in front of him didn’t answer.  Bruce waited another second before dropping to a crouch in front of him.  “Steve.  It’s Bruce.  Can you look at me?”  Steve was too far gone in insanity to be reached, it seemed.  He’d yanked the IV out hours ago, and he’d been scratching at the spot where it had been.  He seemed entirely uncomfortable.  Jittery and jerking and mindless.  Like his body was detached from him and struggling against him and he had no control over it _._   “Steve, please.  Please look at me.”

Steve raised his head slightly.  Red, watery eyes focused on Bruce.  There was blood on his face from his nose and his lip where he’d chewed it raw.  Bruce stood and headed back to the fresh supplies he’d insisted be brought and grabbed a towel.  He wet it with the water and knelt beside Steve again.  “Here.  Let’s clean this up.”  Steve thankfully didn’t struggle as Bruce gently wiped the blood away.  He took this opportunity to get a good look at him.  He’d had the lab’s biometric scanners continuously monitoring Steve’s vitals (which were better now but still fluctuating too much for Bruce’s liking), but he wanted to get some sort of feeling about how much of _Steve_ was still there. Not much.  Steve’s eyes were so bright, unfocused and filled with what Bruce could only describe as power.  Raw and unbridled.  It was terrifying.  “Steve?”

Steve didn’t answer.  There wasn’t even the slightest glint of recognition in his eyes, and his face was permanently locked into a grimace.  Bruce sighed in frustration and worry.  He chanced taking Steve’s right hand in his own.  He patted it gently through the bandages.  “Steve,” he breathed.  “You gotta hang on.  You need to fight now.”

“’m tired,” Steve mumbled.  It was the first thing he’d said in hours that seemed fairly cognizant. 

Bruce took the water bottle and put it in Steve’s hand.  He helped him raise it to his lips.  Steve tried to pull away, but Bruce tenderly yet firmly grasped his face and wouldn’t let him.  “You need to drink.  You can’t get dehydrated again.  It almost killed you last time.  You need to keep your strength up.”  Steve’s hand limply fell away, and Bruce sighed.  He tipped the bottle himself, and Steve drank.  He drank almost all of it, like once he started he couldn’t stop himself.  “Easy.”  Some of it spilled down his chin, and Bruce wiped it away.  Steve’s eyes fluttered shut.  Bruce swallowed his fear and pushed himself closer.  He normally despised contact like this, but he needed to try and anchor Steve and a comforting touch was sometimes more powerful than words.  It was all he had because science was rather fantastically failing him.  “You with me?”

Steve didn’t answer.  He shuddered, clamping his eyes shut in pain.  “Do you know where you are?”  Again, he didn’t respond.  “Do you know who I am?”  The question came out of nowhere.  It was a logical one, Bruce supposed, given the rapid pace and vast breadth of Steve’s cognitive deterioration.  But he hadn’t meant to ask it because the answer was going to be so painful. 

And it was.  So damn painful.  Steve gasped in frustrated fear and lowered his head to his arms again.  “No.”

“Do you remember who you are?”

Tears bled from the corners of Steve’s eyes.  He bit his lower lip hard and shook his head.  Bruce felt something inside him throb sharply.  Everything was hanging on by a thread.  Dangling over the edge of a deep and dark canyon and he had no idea how far they could fall.  He had to do something now to pull Steve back.  Bruce took his friend’s face in his hands the way he’d seen Clint do earlier and lifted his head.  Steve didn’t fight or struggle as Bruce held his gaze as calmly and confidently as he could.  “You’re Steve Rogers, remember that?”  Steve actually whimpered, a weak, pathetic whine that cut straight through Bruce’s chest and stabbed into his heart like an ice pick.  He didn’t let the younger man look away.  This was too important.  “Steve Rogers.  Captain America.  That’s who you are.  You need to remember that.”

Steve still said nothing.  His eyes rolled back into his head slightly and fluttered.  Bruce wasn’t willing to accept this.  Not this.  He couldn’t let Steve go until he was certain Steve _knew_ who he was and how important it was that he remained true to himself.  He shook Steve gently until he woke again.  “You’re Captain America.  Do you hear me?  Captain America.  And Captain America doesn’t break.  Captain America keeps fighting.”  For some reason, it was hard to say that.  Bruce’s throat knotted up and he couldn’t swallow or even breathe. “Captain America isn’t a weapon or a monster.  Captain America is a good man.”

“A good man.”

Bruce hardly dared to hope.  “Yes.  So you need to promise me something now.  You need to promise me that you’ll remember who you are.”

“A good man,” Steve said again.  His voice was nothing more than a whisper.

“That’s right.  Captain America.  And you can’t be anything else, no matter what anyone tries to do to you or tries to make you do.  No matter what.  Promise me you’ll remember that.”

Steve’s eyes opened again, still so bright and shattered, but Bruce thought he saw a glimmer of the man he had been under the crushing weight of delirium.  He was still silent.  Drifting a little.  _Anchor him._   “Promise me, Steve.”

“I – I – he’s in my head.”  At that, Steve’s face crumpled.  “He’s in my head.  He won’t stop talkin’.  He’s in my head.”

Terror coiled tightly in Bruce’s stomach.  “Who?”  Steve shrugged away, shuddering and curling in on himself.  Again, Bruce couldn’t let him get away.  This was too damn important.  “Who?”  Steve cried again in mounting panic, yanking free and staggering to his feet and scrambling from the corner.  He didn’t make it far, too weak and too dizzy, and went down on his knees.  He had his hands pressed over his ears, pressed hard, and he was shivering violently enough to shake the room.  Bruce didn’t fear for himself now.  He couldn’t.  He stumbled after Steve and grabbed him, putting an arm around his broad shoulders and bringing him close enough that he thought he could hear Steve’s heart pound and feel his breaths rattle in and out of his chest.  The dust floating in the air abruptly fell in a cascade.  “Steve, I need you to talk to me now.  Focus.  Talk to me.  _Who?_ ”

“Da,” Steve moaned.  He gritted his teeth.  “He’s in my head.  He’s real angry.  Says I’m nothing.  Worthless.  Sick all the time.  _Weak._ ”

It could have simply been another nightmare.  Another manifestation of the damage Lahey’s drug was doing on a cellular level.  Somehow, though, Bruce knew it wasn’t.  “Sterns, you bastard,” he snarled.  He looked helplessly at the door to the cell, wondering who was behind the one-way glass.  Wondering who was watching and waiting and taking goddamn _notes_.  Bruce couldn’t fight this.  He knew better than anyone this type of pain, this type of desperation to please, this type of fear.  This type of cruelty.  If Sterns was in Steve’s head, masquerading as his father…  “You sick bastard!” he shouted.  “Leave him alone!”

“Make it stop,” Steve moaned.  He pressed harder and harder against his own skull like he was trying to squeeze whatever he was hearing out of his brain.  Bruce was afraid he’d hurt himself.  “Please make it stop.  I don’t wanna…  I can’t!  Make it stop!”  Steve screamed.  It was hoarse and ragged and filled with agony and terror.  He screamed and screamed.

That was it.  This was beyond salvaging.  Beyond fixing.   Science had failed him.   Logic had failed him.  _Restraint_ had failed him.  If Sterns was already trying to get to Steve, it was too late to do anything more than run.  He’d suffered through enough of watching his friends be hurt and used.  He’d cooperated _enough_ , and for nothing.  There were no answers.  There was no way to fix this, and he couldn’t stand another second of it.  Steve couldn’t afford another second of torture.  The anger inside Bruce got hotter and stronger, and this time he let it.  It was time to let the monster loose and take Steve and get him out of here.  It was time to end this.  It was time–

“For you to take a nap,” Sterns said.

Bruce whirled away from Steve.  He was gasping, his heart pounding and pounding, and saw Sterns and Rappaccini and soldiers flanking them.  He’d been so caught up in that moment, where his rage began to rise inside him, that he hadn’t noticed them come inside the cell.  And there was nothing he could do when the soldiers fired their tranquilizer guns at him.  The darts hit him and brought him down before the Hulk could even find his way to the surface.

The soldiers swarmed Steve.  Bruce could hear the scuffle, the shouts, and the room breaking and moaning around him.  Steve crying.  But he couldn’t do anything to help now.  He couldn’t protect Steve now.  He couldn’t even move.  A rush of warmth sucked the strength from his body, and his heart was slowing, _slowing_.  This wasn’t what he wanted.  This wasn’t…

_No._

Sterns loomed over him.  “Study time’s over,” he said.  He smiled.  “Now it’s my turn to work.”

* * *

When Bruce was the Hulk, he was invincible.  Nothing could stop him.  Nothing could even slow him down.  But when the Hulk was trapped as he was now, caged behind muscle relaxants and paralytics and sedatives, Bruce was only a man.  A man who couldn’t fight as his hands were bound behind his back and he was carried through the complex.  Still, he could hear fighting.  A lot of it.  Things weren’t quite real.  He was awake, but he saw and heard and felt things through a long tunnel.  Vaguely he knew Steve was behind him, that there was a company of soldiers trying to restrain him.  Vaguely he knew Steve was laying waste to them.  He couldn’t summon the effort to be relieved or frightened or disturbed.  He thought he should be glad, but even that was too difficult.  And he thought he should struggle, too, but he couldn’t, not even when the soldiers carrying him dropped him and a gun was jabbed into his forehead.

“Captain,” called Sterns.  Bruce blinked and tried to see.  “Captain, I suggest you stop.  I know on some level you still recognize Bruce here.  Stop or we’ll kill him.”

So it was back to this.  Bruce fought to focus, watching as Steve watched him.  Those burning blue eyes grounded him, and when he looked, he saw Steve in them again.  Steve saw him, too, and realized that he _did_ know him.  God, what a fool he’d been.  Lured into this.  Again.  Sterns had been right.  It had never been about the science.  It had been about _control_.

It always had been.

Suddenly he wished he hadn’t told Steve to be a good man.

But it was too damn late for that.  Sterns was talking.  Sterns and Monica.  They were observing dispassionately as the soldiers grabbed Steve and pushed him down to the floor of the hallway and locked another pair of cuffs around his wrists.  Monica tapped a small device in her hand and Steve cried out, contorting mindlessly on the ground as he was electrocuted.  Bruce couldn’t do _anything_ but watch.  He couldn’t even feel rage or grief or pain.  The horrific scene was muted and distant and fuzzy.  And when it was over, he watched Steve moan weakly before slipping back into some sort of stupor.  A single thought broke free from the chemically-induced fog in his head.  _No.  Fight, Steve.  Fight!_

“Why not simply take his mind now?” Monica demanded.  She was angry and impatient.  “He’s demented.  It will be significantly easier to conduct these tests without the human element of unpredictability hindering us.”

“So you want me to control him like a puppet?” Sterns said in a bit of amusement.  “Push a button and see what it does?”

“I want you to eliminate variability,” Monica coldly responded.

“Already done,” Sterns explained, tipping his grotesque head toward Bruce.  “And there’s still that defiance.  We’re almost there, but we need to keep at it just a teeny bit longer.”  Her face tightened.  The soldiers escorting Steve came closer.  They were mostly dragging him at this point.  Steve was so much taller than Sterns that they had to lower his limp form so the bastard could reach him.  Sterns laid his fingers to Steve’s face.  “Yeah, still resisting me.  Just a little.  Touch helps, but I can’t be doing that all the time.  Not really ideal.  We need more craziness, I think.  Like I said, a little push.”  He patted Steve’s cheek.  Steve didn’t seem to notice.  Tears and blood dripped from his lowered face to floor.

“You promised me a weapon,” Rappaccini coldly reminded.  “And Bruce is no help to me like this.  I need his mind, not him drugged beyond utility.”

“What you need is Rogers’ will crushed down into nothing.”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Let me let you in on a little secret, Doctor,” Sterns said condescendingly.  “Science can’t explain everything.  If you want Lahey’s drug to win this war, you need the super soldier serum to surrender.  That means his will defeated.”

“That’s a simplification.  Sir.”  Monica looked frustrated.  “What I need is the means to extract the combined serums out of the subject’s DNA.  And if not that, at least the super soldier serum.”  _It’s impossible_ , Bruce thought.  He’d told her this so many times.  “And you swore to me that Bruce would figure out how to fix the problem.  How can he do that like this?”

“I don’t see the future, you know,” Sterns lightly responded.  “I see probabilities and patterns and all of their complexities.  And I keep telling people: the emotional stuff is harder to predict.  Otherwise pushing Rogers off the edge wouldn’t be so necessary.  If I _knew_ I could keep him under control, I would just do it.”  Sterns sighed, long-suffering.  “But I can assure you with Banner’s track record that he _will_ figure out how to fix the problem, as you put it.”  She opened her mouth as though to object further, but she stopped herself after thinking better of it.  Sterns gave her a placating smile.  “Don’t worry, Doctor Rappaccini.  You’ll get your weapon.  Your new world is coming.  And you’ll get your shot at helping it get here.  Now let’s get going.  Clock’s ticking.”

Monica didn’t seem appeased, but she nodded.  “Yes, Leader.”  She turned to the soldiers.  “Take them to the playground.”

The trip to this playground went by in a haze.  Bruce was helpless, carried along.  The initial strength of the sedative was wearing a little, and he could think again.  The muscle relaxant they gave him was powerful, but the sedative (maybe some kind of benzodiazepine – Bruce had tried most of them off and on over the years to contain the Hulk) wouldn’t last too long.  However, at the moment it was fairly effectively acting to keep his heart rate slow, too slow to power the Hulk.  He was damn helpless.  _God, what the hell have I done?_

The playground was nothing more than a giant cement room that had probably once been a loading bay.  There were things inside it.  Heavy things.  Trucks and cars.  Bruce was carried to a chair where he was made to sit less than gently.  His head lolled uselessly until one of the soldiers snaked a hand through his head and held it up for him so he could see.  The other group of soldiers pulled Steve inside, Steve who was maybe realizing where he was because he started to struggle again.  But he was too weak and out of it to do much more than knock a few of the soldiers back, mostly with his body rather than with his mind, and his fight ended completely when their guns were on Bruce again.  _Take the damn things out of their hands,_ Bruce thought in frustration.  _Focus, Steve.  Think!  You’re stronger than them!_   But Steve didn’t seem to know that, or he’d forgotten it, because he stared wide-eyed at that gun against Bruce’s head and went limp and complacent.

The researchers came into the huge room.  Sterns stood back and dropped his hand to Bruce’s shoulder.  Bruce wanted to flinch and pull away, but he couldn’t.  “Ready for this?  Should be something spectacular.  You helped build this, Bruce.”  Bruce wanted to tell him to go to hell, but he couldn’t.  He couldn’t do anything as the soldiers kept their guns on Steve and their guns on him, as the drugs coursed through his system.  A few of the soldiers pushed Steve forward, and he stumbled and fell.  He knelt in the middle of the room, his hands bound behind his back.  His shoulders were slumped.  He was sniffling.  He was crying.  _Please, God, somebody help us…_

“We want to see what you can do,” Monica said.  Bruce could only see Steve’s back.  He might have been able to break his bonds, but he wasn’t even trying.  Bruce’s thoughts were less and less sluggish and more and more frantic. _Please, God, somebody help us!_   Monica stepped in front of Steve.  “Get up.”

Steve didn’t move.  Bruce could hear him whispering and weeping.  Monica’s temper had been fraying over the last day, and at this point she completely lost it.  She slapped him roughly, his face snapping to the side.  “Get up!” 

Steve was trembling in fear now, skittering away in abject terror.  The guards grabbed him and pulled him back, but again he didn’t fight.  He was someplace inside his head.  Someplace where he was small and submissive.  Where he was cowering before an abusive parent.  “You know what this is like, don’t you, Bruce,” Sterns said softly so only Bruce could hear him.  “You’ve been there.  Some tiny mistake you made.  Sometimes it’s not even that much.  Sometimes it’s just because.  And then you’ll do whatever, say anything, just to get out of it.”

“’m sorry,” Steve whimpered.  He could barely get the words out over his rough breathing and desperate sobs.  “Please!  I didn’t mean it.  I swear I didn’t.”

Sterns shook his head in mock pity.  “That driving need to not be beaten.  Don’t make him mad, right?  Don’t make the monster mad.”  Bruce’s eyes flooded with hot, stinging, frustrated tears.  He wanted his heart to pound, but it just wouldn’t.  “I don’t even really have to make him think about it.  Not anymore.  Just a little push, and Dan’s drug opens the flood gates and it’s coming out all on its own now.”

“Get up,” Monica sternly commanded of Steve again, her voice laced with an icy and very real threat, and Steve obediently pushed his unwilling body to his feet.  “I want to see what you can do.  Show me.”

“Life certainly likes its ironies,” Sterns commented dryly.  “Take you and Rogers.  Ironic that you share such similar pasts but came out so differently.  You the Hulk and him Captain America.  Well, not for much longer, I don’t think, though I got to say he put up a hell of a fight to stay who he was compared to you.  You just went with it.  He’s tortured himself for days, for weeks, trying not to give in.  You know what?  I think some small part of you likes it when you let go.  It probably feels good, like release or something.  You think he’ll find it as good?”

Bruce couldn’t stand listening to this.  It was torturous.  He watched helplessly as Monica crossed her arms over her nice, navy pant suit and lab coat.  He watched helplessly as the soldiers pushed Steve closer to her.  “I want you to lift these objects.  Before you could barely get them off the ground and managed only a few seconds of continuous levitation.  I want you to do better.”

Steve shook his head, his face crumpling in dismay and agony.  “I – I can’t.  Please don’t make me.  I’ll be good.  Please.”

Monica was unsympathetic.  She turned to Sterns.  “This would be easier with your help,” she said tightly.

Sterns shrugged a little.  “Might be,” he conceded, but he didn’t move away from Bruce.

Monica’s eyes flashed in fury.  Whatever partnership that existed between them seemed to be dissolving before Bruce’s very eyes.  Normally that would be a relief, a sign that maybe he could use their dissension to his advantage.  But he had a feeling that Sterns was very much the one in charge, and Rappaccini’s frustration and desperation was no threat to him.  “Do not make me hurt anyone else on your account,” she said to Steve.  She reached for that small device in her lab coat and thumbed it.  The soldiers around Steve grabbed his newly freed arms and secured them again in front of him.  He didn’t fight.  He was still shaking, his eyes lowered, his entire posture defeated.  He wasn’t there.  He was a kid, afraid of being hit by his father.  Bruce didn’t think Monica realized that.  “You know what happened the last time you struggled, so you know that’s not an idle threat.”

Steve wavered on his feet.  This was ridiculous.  He was too far gone to participate in any sort of testing.  Bruce wanted to scream.  As the silent seconds rushed away from them, however, Steve straightened slightly.  He turned and looked over his shoulder at Bruce, and Bruce saw _him_ in his eyes again.  The good man.  Captain America.  Then he stepped away from the soldiers and Monica and moved toward the cars and tractor trailers.  The researchers were talking quietly amongst themselves about a second set of data and predictions.  And Sterns let out a slow breath.  “Now this is interesting, Bruce.  Here’s a man who could literally kill all of us with a thought, and he’s following our orders like a robot, orders which, by the way, are completely against his best interests.  He’s too distraught to do anything other than what he’s told.  Life’s ironies, again.  How quickly he could end this, strangle us all, shatter our bones, short out our brains or stop our hearts dead.  I wonder what’s driving him more: his foolish promise to be a good man who’ll do anything, sacrifice anything, to see his friend saved.  Or his fear of punishment from his father.”  Sterns patted his shoulder.  “I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive.  Like watching his father beat his mother and living through his father beating him made him into who he is.  You know something about that, too.”  Sterns made an exaggerated show of trying to think.  “And I don’t think he actually promised you anything, did he?  That he’d remember to be a good man?  Did he?”

The Hulk _growled_ in the back of Bruce’s mind.  His heart was pounding faster now.  And his fingers twitched against the cuffs around his wrists.

Steve was in front of the cars.  He didn’t falter this time.  And there was no struggle.  He levitated the cars, all three of them, at once.  And the tractor trailer.  Bruce heard him laugh a little, a surprised laugh, like he was realizing he could do this and it didn’t hurt.  It was rough sounding, and it got louder and more twisted and more tormented and tinged with insanity.  _Oh, God._   He raised his hands and the cars exploded.  Not destructively, but Steve _dismantled_ them, pulling them each apart all at once.  Bumpers and tires and engine parts and nuts and bolts, down the smallest of them in fact, and he held the components perfectly still even though there were thousands of them.  And then he _reassembled_ them.  In a soundless show of perfection and precision that happened in the blink of an eye, the cars were back together as though they’d never been reduced to a floating array of pieces. They thudded back to the concrete floor.

“Oh my God,” someone breathed.

“Wow,” Sterns said.  He moved away from Bruce, who was struggling with everything he had now that his mind was coming out of the haze and his body was returning to him.  “Pretty neat, Captain.”  Steve glanced back like he was searching for approval.  He looked… excited.  There was no other way to describe it.  Excited and relieved.  _Exhilarated._ Sterns smiled.  “Can you do that to a person?”

The room turned quiet.  Bruce could barely breathe.  This was it.  He knew it.  This was the moment where Sterns was going to try to push Steve over the edge.  He couldn’t think anymore, the fog in his head notwithstanding, as he watched and waited.  His heart was thumping heavily in his chest.  Faster and faster.  Not fast enough.

Steve was still.  Everything was hinged on his expression, on what he thought and felt.  On his emotions.  _Everything._   Relief washed over Bruce in an icy wave when Steve shook his head.  He didn’t do it with the certainty for which Captain America was known.  It was a small, almost reflexive jerk.  But it was something.  It was defiance.

“The subject refused to harm others before,” Rappaccini reported to Sterns.  “I highly doubt he’ll do it without your control.  And it doesn’t matter now.  Almost 95% of his DNA is mutated.  He suffered no ill effects from a phenomenal display of his powers.  I’m satisfied.”

Sterns announced, “Well, I’m not.”

Monica ignored him.  “Take the subject back to his cell.  Full sedation and full restraints.  We need to move fast to develop the extraction procedure while the super soldier serum is this depressed.  New rounds of tests.  And I want Doctor Banner taken care of.  Fresh clothes and food.  Some proper sleep so he’ll be ready for work.”

“We’re not done here!” Sterns said sharply.  “I’m the Leader, and you follow me!”  It was the first time Bruce had heard him be anything other than flippant.  The researchers ceased their conversations about the data they’d collected.  The soldiers stopped manhandling Steve, who was limp and compliant once more like he’d been knocked back into a stupor by Sterns’ question.  Like he was honestly wondering about it.  Like he was realizing he _could_ do things to people.  Bruce didn’t like the dazed look in his eyes.  Sterns left him in the chair and headed toward Steve.  _No.  No!  No, Steve, don’t listen to him.  Don’t let him in your head.  Don’t listen! Don’t–_

“I know you don’t know me all that well, Steve.  Alright if I call you that?”  Steve didn’t answer.  He immediately dropped his gaze back to the floor.  There were tears in his eyes again.  “But I know you.  I can read your mind, you know.  Yours in particular.  I could read it even before you got dosed with Lahey’s wonder drug.  Yours sticks out.  It _really_ sticks out.  Out of everybody in the whole wide world, yours is very distinctly you.”  Steve closed his eyes.  “You know why?”  He didn’t answer.  Sterns stepped closer to him, donning an expression of threatening rage, and repeated himself harshly.  “You know why?”

Even though he was inches taller and had at least a hundred pounds of muscle on Sterns, Steve flinched and cowered.  _Cowered._   “N-No, sir.”

“Sir?  No need to call me that.  I’m your friend, and I wouldn’t hurt you, pal.”  Sterns patted his shoulder, his smile disgustingly placating, as he spared a glance at Bruce and Monica.

“Doctor Sterns, this is ridiculous.  You’re wasting precious time,” Rappaccini said, her arms folded across her chest and her voice cross and agitated.

“Hey, butt out.  I’m talking to my friend Steve here.”  The way he kept saying that word was disturbing.  _Friend._ As was his amiable voice and closeness to Steve.  He was trying to manipulate him.  Turn him.  That much was sickeningly obvious to Bruce.  But Steve was so muddled it was impossible to see what he was thinking, other than he was afraid.  “Anyway,” Sterns said, stepping around to Steve’s front, “I’ll tell you why I know your mind.  Because it’s _pristine_.  Your thoughts are, for lack of a better word, pure.  And I don’t mean pure like pretty or naïve or innocent.  I mean pure like you don’t get angry.  Anger makes stuff ugly.  Take it from Banner over there.  Take it from me and this, ugh, _hideous_ tumor thing growing out of my face.  Anger makes everything nasty and twisted.  Everybody is tainted by it, one way or another.  Everybody except you.  You don’t get angry.”  Sterns jabbed his forefinger into Steve’s sternum with every word.  “At least not in a way that damages you or anyone else.  It’s remarkable.  And when you came out of the ice and back into the world, I really started to wonder at that, how it is that you, you who’s been beaten up and broken down and hurt so many times in your life, how _you_ can keep it all under check when no one else would have been able to.  You’ve had a tough life, pal.  The books and documentaries and museum exhibits don’t really do it justice.  I don’t know how you survived it, let alone became this… this well-adjusted paragon of virtue and valor.”

Steve teetered on his feet.  All of the sudden he was losing consciousness.  “Whoa, there.  Keep with it, kid.  We’re still talking here.”  Sterns steadied him with an arm around his back.  It looked downright ridiculous, this small, ugly man keeping Captain America from passing out.  “So, at any rate, as I spent more time wondering about this, I realized it’s not possible that you don’t get angry.  It’s just that you don’t take it out on anyone.  You internalize it.  You bury it down so deep, all that pain and frustration and rage, so it can’t hurt other people.  You swallow poison over and over again, willingly, so that no one else suffers.  We both know who taught you that.  Wake up, Steve.  This is important stuff I’m telling you.”  Steve winced again.  His eyes opened but weren’t focused on anything.  They were veritably ethereal with that powerful glow.  Sterns grabbed his face between his hands, just like Bruce had and Clint had.  He smiled just a tad maniacally.  “You are, beyond a doubt, the strongest, bravest, noblest person alive.  You take the pain and get back up and soldier on.  You’re a hero.”

“Doctor Sterns,” Monica interrupted again, “he’s not listening to you.”

Now Sterns ignored her.  “But here’s the thing, Steve.  I’m thinking that you deserve more than this.  I’m thinking you’re realizing that, too.  I mean, it’s all there, buddy.  This awful, _miserable_ life you’ve led is right in front of your eyes now, even the things you repressed because they’re just too painful to be part of you.  And you’re alone here in this new world.  Your girlfriend is an old woman who went on without you.  Betrayed you, really, if you want to be honest.  Your childhood buddy is dead.  All of your war pals are gone.  What do you have, _one_ friend in this time?  And he’s not here.”  Bruce wanted to wring Sterns’ neck.  He’d be the first one the Hulk killed if he could get free.  “Point being that _you_ deserve to be angry, you know?  Vent.  Let off some steam.  _Hurt_ something so that you can feel better.”

Steve finally focused on Sterns.  His eyes were watery, but they were harder.  Sterns shook his head.  “Aren’t you _tired_ of being in pain?  Aren’t you tired of being hurt?  Aren’t you angry, Steve?”

“No…” Bruce breathed.

“Hell, I’m angry just looking at you.  I’m pissed off at the people who did this to you.  It was bad enough to have been experimented on in the first place, but then _more_ scientists kidnap you and bring you here and basically torture you.  Let’s not dress it up to make it look better, guys.”  Sterns turned to the group of soldiers and researchers.  “You tortured this poor man.”  He was saying these things like he hadn’t master-minded the entire plot.  But Steve didn’t know he had.  Bruce couldn’t reveal his lies.  And none of his subordinates would call him out.  “They do that horrible thing to you again, make you go through it _again_.”

“Stop,” Steve whispered.  “Please.”

Sterns’ face crumpled in a false show of compassion.  He actually hugged Steve.  _Hugged_ him.  It was repulsive.  “Alright.  Sorry.  But there’s a point to this, Steve.  The point is you should be angry.  There’s no reason not to be.  So be angry.  Make yourself feel better.”  Steve’s eyes flooded with tears again and he wavered, crushed under the weight of trauma and exhaustion and emotion.  Sterns paused a minute to let his words sink their venomous claws into Steve’s heart.  “Let me ask you this.  If you had to the chance to strike at the people who hurt you, would you?  Because…”  And here Sterns dropped his voice to a conspiratorial murmur and leaned close to Steve’s face again.  “Because they’re right here in this room, and it just begs for you to take some vengeance.  Doctor Rappaccini.  Doctor.  Pfft.”  Sterns grunted and shook his head.  “What kind of doctor does this to you?  Huh?  Straps you down against your will and dumps drugs into your veins that you don’t want?  Puts poison in your body until you puke your guts out ’cause you’re so sick?  Until you don’t know where you are or who you are?”

“That’s enough!” Rappaccini shouted.  “Get him out of here.”

Not one of the soldiers took a step forward.  Sterns got more animated in his rant.  “What kind of doctor makes you do tests like this even when she knows they hurt you, huh?  What kind of monster is that?”  Steve stiffened.  “She wants you to show her what you can do.  Well, why don’t you.”

This was it.  The push.  It wasn’t with thought.  It was with words, and it was cruel and damning.  Steve was still.  So still.  The shaking had stopped.  Bruce watched, horrified, praying with every ounce of his being that those words, those coercive words coming from a mastermind’s mouth, weren’t getting through to Steve.  That Steve would remember who he was.  This was a war that Steve needed to win.  A war against Dan’s drug.  A war against delirium and pain and suffering.  A war against evil.

But the minute Steve turned, Bruce knew that he’d lost.

Steve’s face was a dark scowl of absolute rage.  He ripped the cuffs on his wrists apart in one clean, quick, easy motion.  Every soldier in the room was flung to the walls, their guns yanked from their surprised hands.  Steve held them there without even so much as looking at them, their straining, moaning, and pleading bodies twisted against concrete with their rifles floating beside them, pressed to their own heads.  The research team screamed, running for the door, the door that Steve sealed shut.  They threw themselves to the walls and ground in panic, terrified for their lives in the face of Steve’s wrath.  Steve didn’t bother with them yet, however.  His burning eyes were focused on one person.

Monica let loose half a wrangled cry as her legs broke beneath her.  Bruce winced, trying to turn away at the sickening snap.  Steve narrowed his eyes, raising her off the ground a few inches before she could fall.  An invisible hand was tight around her throat, choking her.  Bruce could see her skin break and bruise with the forces abusing it.  She tried to reach for that device that controlled Steve’s handcuffs, but her wrist shattered and the small pad clattered uselessly to the floor.  Her eyes were wide with terror and pain, bulging as she fought to breathe.  She couldn’t do a thing as Steve held her suspended in the air but tremble and weakly gasp.

Sterns appraised the display uncaringly.  Steve was rigid beside him, calm and quiet and malevolent.  He just held her like this.  He let her suffer.  A smile twisted his lips as he twisted her bones.  “Nicely done, my friend,” Sterns said.  “Not so scary now, is she?”

Steve said nothing.  He watched, his eyes dark and threatening, as he tortured her for an endless moment.  Bruce couldn’t believe what was happening.  He had to stop this.  He had to stop it!  His muscles twitched and jerked against his restraints, but still they wouldn’t heed his commands.  And his anger and panic were still too numb to bring the Hulk out.  Sterns glanced to him as he struggled uselessly.  “You know what else, Steve, buddy.  That guy over there.  Doctor Bruce Banner.  You know him, don’t you.  Former teammate.  Former friend.  Former Avenger.  You know what he did to you?”

Steve’s fiery eyes darted to Bruce.  Monica struggled weakly and pathetically as Steve held her a second longer.  Then he dropped her to the floor.  She shrieked shrilly and tried to scramble away as Steve took a slow step past her, past her and toward Bruce.  Bruce’s heart pounded harder.  Harder and faster.  His adrenaline was spiking.  “You know Bruce.  He helped his old colleague bring his life’s work to fruition.  Didn’t you, Bruce?”  Sterns grinned.  The gleeful excitement in his dark, beady eyes was revolting.  “You conspired with your pal Dan Lahey to _hurt_ Steve.  And then, like that wasn’t enough, you found your way back to help your old girlfriend hurt him again!  _Your_ expertise in Gamma radiation.  _Your_ knowledge about the serum.”  Sterns shook his head with an exaggerated sigh.  “Your driving desire to fix yourself.  It’s really why you came, why you keep tricking poor Steve into thinking you’re his friend, right.  Right, Bruce?”

There was a _push_ inside his head, and the word _yes_ slammed against his lips.  Sterns was trying to control him.  But he bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood and refused to heed the demand.  The muscle relaxants were wearing off quickly now.  He needed to fight.  “No.  No!”

“Yes,” argued Sterns.

“ _No!_  Steve!  You know me!  You know I would _never_ –”

“Oh, you would.  And you did.  You know it, Steve.  Go ahead.  Make him hurt.”  Sterns smiled.  “Kill him.”

Bruce went cold with fear as Steve stalked menacingly closer.  There was _nothing_ in his eyes now.  No sign of Steve Rogers, of Captain America, of the man everyone respected and admired because of how good and strong and brave he was.  There was no recognition that they were friends or had fought together to save the world, that they had suffered through this nightmare together.  Steve didn’t know him, at least not as anyone else other than another monster who’d tied his hands and torn into his mind.  Steve wanted to hurt him.  Steve wanted to kill him.

Despite every ounce of self-preservation blasting over him, there was a small part of Bruce that thought he deserved it.  But that part was being devoured by panic, and panic brought the Hulk closer and closer to the surface.  Now it wasn’t so much a question of not being able to let him go.  It was a question of stopping himself, _again_ , because he didn’t want to fight Steve.  He didn’t want to hurt Steve.  _I won’t kill Steve._   He had to reach through the insanity and pain and destruction and everything Sterns was saying and help Steve.  He had to.  And Steve had to still be alive under all of it.  _He had to be._   “Steve,” he gasped.  His mouth wasn’t working quite right yet, so his voice sounded weak and frightened.  “Steve, you know me.  You know that’s not true.”  How could he convince Steve when he didn’t fully believe it himself?  How many times had he said this to Steve since Dan had forced them into this hell?  Bruce swallowed down his guilt.  The growl of the Hulk shook his soul.  “I’m an Avenger.  I’m your teammate.  I’m your friend.”

Sterns rolled his eyes disparagingly.  “Oh, please.  Think about it, Steve.  He could have let that beast inside of him out at any time and rescued you.  Why didn’t he?  It’s because he wants answers and he knew he could get them from _you_.”

“I didn’t because you need a cure, and fighting doesn’t–”

“It’s because he cares more about science than he does about your life.  Did you know he was experimenting on your blood and tissue samples without your permission?  He was lying to you from the get-go, kiddo.  Lying right to your face.”  Bruce flinched, feeling guilty and ashamed and exposed.  He wasn’t sure how much of this argument Steve understood or if it was all like a drum beating against him and pushing him forward.  “Bruce is just like all of them.  You’re a lab rat to them.  You’re the perfect guinea pig.”

“That’s not true,” Bruce returned quickly.  “Steve, listen to me.  Please.  I didn’t let the Hulk out because I was afraid of hurting you.  I’m afraid now.  I don’t want to hurt you.  I don’t want you to hurt me.  But I’d rather you kill me than I hurt you.”  He hoped he had the control to prove that because Steve was close now.  His hand snapped from his side and wrapped around Bruce’s throat.  He forced himself to be limp and nonthreatening.  The Hulk roared in the back of his mind, louder and louder, shattering the planes of his thoughts until he could barely think, but he held on.  He needed control over himself, now more than ever, in the face of so much chaos.  In the face of Sterns’ mounting control over Steve.  He could barely breathe with Steve’s fingers so tightly squeezing his throat.  One snap was all Steve would need to break his neck or pulverize his windpipe.  He wondered who would move faster, Steve or the Hulk.  He didn’t want to find out.  “Steve, please…  Listen to me.  Please listen to me.”

Steve’s wrathful visage loosened just slightly.  Bruce couldn’t bear to have hope, but he did all the same.  “You told me to kill you if you ever raised your hand to us.  You made me promise.  Do you remember that?”  He held Steve’s gaze.  Even though the power cracking and churning behind the blazing blue light was terrifying, he stared deep into those eyes and looked for his friend.  “You trusted me enough to ask me to stop you.  I don’t know if I can kill you.  I don’t know if I can do it.  So listen to me now.  Please.  _Please._   Stop.  Don’t listen to him.”

“Steve, buddy, don’t let him lie to you.  You _know_ what he did to you.  He’d rather kill himself than hurt you?  BS, and you know it,” Stern said.  There wasn’t a hint of doubt in his voice, the smug bastard.  He had Steve, and he knew it.  He had certainty.

Bruce had faith.  He never used to believe in things like souls and the inherent goodness of a man.  But he did now.  He _had to_ now.  He had to have the strength and the courage and the determination.  Some twist of fate had put him in this position, and he was the only one who could save Captain America.  “You asked me to stop you.  You remember.  So that’s what I’m doing.  Stop.”  He saw it then.  The lightning raging in the storm of Steve’s eyes paused, and there was a hint of calm.  Those vicious fingers grasping his neck shook and loosened.  “And you remember what you promised me.”  Bruce could breathe again enough to make his voice stronger and push the raging monster back down.  “You remember.  You promised me you would stay who you are.  Remember, Steve?  Who are you?”

Sterns was right, of course.  Steve had never promised that.  But Bruce didn’t care.  He’d lie now if he had to.  Steve’s eyes filled with tears, with desperate, tortured tears, and his face crumpled, caught between rage and grief.  His fingers became tight again, tighter than before, and the Hulk thundered to the surface.  Bruce felt his muscles jolt with sudden strength, and he yanked himself free of his bonds.  He grabbed the hand around his throat, his skin tinting green and his eyes glowing gold, but he didn’t pull it back.  _No,_ he demanded, his sharp order echoing through his head.  It was physically agonizing to fight himself like this, but he would.  _No!  Stay back!  Stay down!_

And he would keep his faith.  “Who are you, Steve?  _Who are you?_ ”

The hand around his throat was suddenly gone.  Bruce sucked in a grateful, shaking breath, both to appease his oxygen-deprived body and to calm the Hulk.  Steve staggered back, his eyes wide.  He stood, his chest heaving as he, too, struggled for air, looking down at his hands like they weren’t his own.  He shuddered.  “I’m a good man,” he whispered.

Sterns was desperate now.  Furious and frantic.  “Steve, pal, you need to do this.  It’s the only thing that’ll make you feel better.  He hurt you, so hurt him back.  Kill him.”  Steve’s body was shaking violently, trapped in the war that had been raging for days.  He looked back at Bruce, Bruce who slowly stood from the chair with muscles that still weren’t quite free from the drugs but steady enough, and then at Sterns.  Sterns who was shedding levity and confidence like a second coat.  “Steve, come on.”

Steve didn’t move.  He looked down at his hands again.  “No.”

“Fine.  I miscalculated.  If you won’t kill Bruce, go back to killing her.”  Sterns pointed at Monica, who was sobbing and still trying to get away with both of her legs broken.  “Kill all of them.”  The guns hovering at the heads of the soldiers wavered.  “Come on.”

“No.”

“You worthless little bastard,” Sterns snarled, and Steve’s eyes went wide in terror again and he fell to his knees, bringing his hands up to cover his head like he expected to be hit.  Now he was the one scrambling away.  Bruce knew what Sterns was trying to do.  It was one final and desperate attempt to ply Steve’s worst fears against him.  The nightmares of his past brought to life and looming over him.  Bruce growled and took a step to plant himself between Steve and Sterns, but Sterns eyes flicked to him and suddenly he couldn’t move again.  There were chains around his body and chains around his mind.  “Stay out of this, Banner.”  Sweat beaded on Sterns’ face from keeping the Hulk immobile, if just for this second.  He looked down at Steve.  “You do what I say.  You hear me?  Do it.”

“I won’t!”

_“Do it!”_

_“No!”_

And that was it.  Steve didn’t break.  Steve didn’t surrender.  Steve stayed true to himself.

Bruce nearly collapsed in relief.

Sterns’ furious expression disappeared into one of irritation and resignation.  “Ugh, I can’t _believe_ I was wrong about this.  I suppose I should have known better.  Emotional outcomes are so damn hard to predict sometimes.  Some men don’t change, and you’re freaking Captain America.  All that good in you is apparently not nearly as fragile as I thought.”  Steve wasn’t listening.  He wavered on his knees, one hand planted on the floor to keep himself upright as he struggled to breathe.  Sterns shook his head.  “Alright, Captain.  I really wanted to avoid this, but the best laid plans and all that…  I guess we have to do it the hard way.”  He grabbed Steve’s head, pressing his fingers harshly and forcefully into Steve’s temples and scalp.  Sterns eyes exploded with power.  Steve screamed.

And that was it, too.  Bruce lost control.  Sterns’ thoughts retracted from his own, and the onslaught of rage finally burst free.  It rushed over him in a wave of fire, muscles growing and expanding, skin changing, bones strengthening.  Cells transforming.  DNA mutating.  Bruce howled in absolute fury, his voice morphing into the monster, and his consciousness was forced down.

But it was too late.

Sterns laughed and gasped, pale-faced and covered in glistening sweat, his eyes wide.  The growth on the side of his head pulsated at a rapid pace.  “Oh.  _Oh._   This is… _awesome._ ”  Steve still knelt at his feet.  His breathing had slowed to a startlingly calm pace.  He’d stopped shaking.  Sterns retracted shaking fingers from Steve’s head, smiling and giggling but nervous.  So nervous.  “I got this.  I think I do.  Yeah.  I got it.  Come on.”

Steve stood.  There was no expression on his face now.  No fear or pain.  No anger.  He opened his eyes.  They didn’t focus.  Not on any one thing, at any rate.  And there was no sign of a man left in them.  There was only the power.

And Sterns was taking it by force.

“Do your thing, Steve,” Sterns ordered.

The Hulk roared and charged.

Steve raised his hand and flung the Hulk across the room.  And then the guns went off.  _All of them_.  Bodies fell to the floor and people screamed.  The Hulk snatched up one of the cars and threw it toward Steve, but Steve batted it aside before it even got close to him.  The Hulk growled in frustration and stampeded back across the room.  The entirety of the complex shook with each step.  Steve stood protectively in front of Sterns, and the cement floor was ripped upward, breaking into huge slabs that slammed down in front of the Hulk.  The monster tore through them like they were nothing, one after another, until he was charging toward Steve and Sterns.  _Kill the small man_ , Bruce called from the back of the Hulk’s mind.  His normally calm voice was battered with panic and desperation.  _Hold back.  Save Steve.  Don’t hurt Steve._

That wasn’t going to be an option.  A burning mess of a car was flung at the Hulk.  He slammed a fist through the scorching fire and metal, but Steve bent the flames around him.  The Hulk seethed in frustration as the explosion kept him locked in place.  He heard the patter of guns firing, bullets pricking him like mosquitoes, and he howled in anger as the fire burned hotter and hotter.  He whirled, disoriented in the circle of flames so tightly embracing him, his anger pounding and coursing over him as wildly as the blaze.  _Save Steve_ , Bruce called from inside of him. _Hold back.  You know Steve.  Don’t hurt him.  Save Steve._

The Hulk wasn’t listening to him.  He randomly picked a direction and surged through the fire.  Steve caught him the minute he exited it and flung him up into the roof.  Violently he slammed into the concrete and steel, and there was the slightest sensation of pain.  The Hulk hadn’t felt pain in so long that he almost didn’t recognize it, and when he did, the anger got worse.  He fell back to the floor and thundered toward Steve, throwing debris at him in a rapid succession.  The wreckage never got close, slamming into an invisible field around Steve and Sterns and bouncing uselessly to the side.  But Steve was shoved back a few steps, and his face tightened in effort.  The Hulk pounded forward, battering the remains of the building.  He balled his massive hand into an equally massive fist and rammed it at Steve.  Steve caught it, the momentum from the strike driving him back further, but he was quick to turn the Hulk’s power against himself.  He whirled, smaller and more agile, and landed a telekinetically-powered kick in the Hulk’s midriff that sent him flying.  The monster snarled when he recovered and threw another strike at Steve.  His punch hit an impenetrable wall of air and that sensation of pain came again, strong enough to shake his bones.

Steve snatched the huge tractor trailer from the other side of the room and catapulted it at the Hulk faster than the beast could prevent.  The heavy load of steel and iron, tons and tons of it, came down on him.  Steve grimaced with the strain as he rapidly wrapped broken metal around the wild beast, clamping it around the Hulk’s wrists and ankles.  He pulled the bindings tighter and tighter like they were little more than rope.  More and more steel came to the mounting pile encasing the struggling Avenger.  The metal was compressing the Hulk in restraints that were tight and torturous.  The Hulk screamed and fought to free himself, but he couldn’t.  Steve was crushing him.

“Good,” Sterns said.  Steve narrowed his eyes and pulled part of the ceiling down in a rattle and crash, adding more metal and concrete to the cage he was building.  The Hulk squirmed – _squirmed_ as if the Hulk could do such a thing – but between the thick steel wrapped around and around his legs and chest and arms and Steve’s own massively amplified powers holding him still and Bruce still trying to hold him back, there wasn’t much he could do.  The horrific, shrill whine of metal bending was deafening, and a huge support beam from the ceiling was yanked loose.  Steve wrapped that around the Hulk’s neck, choking him.  “Excellent work.  Hold him there.”

Steve was in pain.  It didn’t seem to faze him, but he was.  Sterns’ hand on his shoulder was grounding him, strengthening him.  Keeping him immune to how much he was suffering.  Somewhere buried under the Hulk’s rage, Bruce bristled.  “Bring me her,” Sterns ordered, and Steve turned slightly and dragged Rappaccini’s body across the floor with a blink of hard, narrowed eyes.

Monica was in agonizing pain.  She tried to lift herself up, but she couldn’t.  Steve did it for her, levitating her off the floor.  Her normally sleek hair was mussed and loose of its bun.  Sweat bathed her face, and her eyes were blown wide with fear.  “Doctor Sterns, please, I–”

“Did what you had to do in the name of science,” Sterns finished.  “I know.  So am I.  Beta-testing for the new world order, Doctor.”  Sterns nodded to Steve.  “Kill her.”

Still, Steve hesitated.  The effort he was expending to keep the Hulk contained was draining him quickly.  As powerful as he was now, there were still limits.  The Hulk growled and struggled and managed to rip one arm free.  Sterns waited a moment more before setting both his hands to Steve’s shoulders.  “This is a problem,” he groaned in annoyance.  He closed his eyes and grunted with effort himself, undoubtedly pushing his own thoughts and desires into Steve’s mind again.  And then, just like that, Steve snapped Rappaccini’s neck without ever laying a finger on her.

The Hulk screamed.  It was mostly Bruce screaming inside him.

“And we have success!  More or less anyway,” Sterns said breathlessly.  Steve utterly collapsed before him.  “Oh, no.  No, no, no.  Come on, kid.  Up.  You need to get me out of here.”  The Hulk scrambled and struggled anew as the bindings around his body began to loosen.  “Come on.  Look at me.”  Sterns walked around the front of Steve and grabbed his chin and tipped his face upward.  Steve’s eyes were half-lidded and vacant.  Sterns’ brows knitted together as he focused.  “I’m gonna show you something.  That’s the power supply to the reactor’s coolant systems in the lab back there,” he said.  “See it?”

Steve jerked and struggled a little.  “No, come on.  Focus.  Look in your mind.  Do you see it?”  _Oh, God._   _Fight.  Stop them.  Kill the small man!_   But the Hulk couldn’t escape no matter how hard he tried.  Even as distracted as Steve was, as battered as he was, his hold was still too strong.  Sterns concentrated, his fingers harsh against Steve’s face and his thoughts deep in Steve’s head.  “Short it out.”

Without resistance, Steve did it.  The power flickered.  The lights shut off, and if it wasn’t for the daylight streaming through the hole in the ceiling, they would have been trapped in complete darkness.  The building rumbled.  Distantly alarms were wailing.  _Stop him.  Stop him!_ Sterns nodded in approval.  There was undeniable relief splayed all over his hideous face.  “Okay.  Now bring the rest of this place down on the beast there.  Then we’re off.”  Steve pulled away, mechanically got to his feet, and did as he was told.  The Hulk screamed in absolute frustration, finally breaking loose of the cage just as the rest of the building snapped apart and collapsed.  Tons and tons of concrete and steel crashed down on him.  It was almost like a black hole had formed on top of the Hulk, a huge gaping maw into which gravity was pulling everything.  Compressing everything.  _Crushing everything._   In the back of the Hulk’s mind, Bruce cried with frustration and desperation.  _Stop him!  Save Steve!_

The Hulk wasn’t interested in saving anyone.  He shoved Bruce so far down into his subconscious that he lost all semblance of rational thought, of control.  Of himself.  The world came down with a thunderous explosion of steel and cement.  When the dust settled, the Leader and his weapon were gone.  More than half of the building was now inside the loading bay in a mangled mess.  In the remains of the lab, alarms were blaring and lights were flashing.  The reactor was quickly overheating.

And Bruce was completely buried.


	17. Chapter 17

A massive explosion momentarily blinded Tony, and Iron Man’s HUD lit up like Christmas.  “Holy shit.  What was that?” he gasped, drawing to an immediate halt some a few thousand feet above the surface of the earth.

JARVIS was quick to sort through the incoming data from Iron Man’s long-range sensors.  “It appears to have occurred at the target location, sir.”  Numbers and images flashed before Tony’s eyes, and none of them looked good.  “If the facility contained some sort of reactor, it may have suffered damage.  I am detecting heat signatures consistent with a partial core meltdown.”

 _Shit._ “Fury!” Tony bellowed, whirling in the air to see the SHIELD quinjets carrying the Avengers and members of the STRIKE Team following him.  “Call everyone off!  Call them off!”

Fury’s tight voice echoed through Iron Man’s helmet.  “Stark, we’re picking up some sort of detonation–”

“It might be nuclear.”

“Might be?”

“Probably is!  Get everyone out.  Call for an evacuation of the surrounding area.  Hurry!”  _At least this place is in the middle of nowhere._   It was a small miracle, and one that didn’t offer much in terms of consolation.  Panic and frustration pulsed through Tony.  Every time he’d reached a state in his mind where he was fairly confident this situation couldn’t get any worse, it managed to get worse.  He switched his communications link to the jet with the team, the jet that Clint had banked hard to the left to alter its course.  They were miles away from the compound buried deep in the mountains and forests of northern New Mexico, and even from this distance the smoke was visible.  “Barton, hold back.  I’m going on ahead.”

Clint’s voice came through, tight with dismay and impatience.  However, he was smart enough to realize that Tony, with the thick, protective suit of armor covering him, was the only one of them readily equipped to deal with this.  “Call us in as soon as you can,” he said.  “Be careful.”

“Will do.”  Tony fired the rockets in his boots and palms again and resumed his course, careening toward the installation as fast as he could.  Any doubts about whether or not this was the place AIM was holding Steve and Bruce completely disappeared as he flew closer to the huge fire painting the blue sky red and orange and dumping bright colors all over the IR spectrum on his HUD.  He dipped lower to the ground, zooming over the tops of pines and around hills of rock, until he was right in front of where the installation was supposed to be.  “Crap.”

Iron Man set down on the smoldering, burning remains of what had once been a large building.  An explosion from below had ripped up through its center, and Tony could see straight down from the roof to the basement where his scanners were indicating the reactor was.  It wasn’t a very large one ( _thank God_ ), likely built for only research purposes, but he could see from here that part of it was burning.  Radiation warnings were blaring loudly through what was left of the place and flashing all across his HUD.  Exposure limits had already been breached.  Anyone left alive would be dead in a matter of minutes.  _God.  Where’s Steve?  Where’s Bruce?_ “JARVIS, any sign of Rogers or Banner?”

“No.  I am not detecting any life signs, though with the excessive heat and radiation my scans are more limited.”

It didn’t matter.  _If they’re here, they’re dead._   The radiation alone was enough to kill anyone, the force from the explosion and the fire notwithstanding.  Fury pounded in Tony’s chest.  This couldn’t be happening!  Helplessly he floundered, struggling to hold back tears as he descended a few floors into the building.  He focused on the problem, ignoring the grief threatening him.  “Is there any way to stop this?”  If the reactor went, the fallout would be serious.  Right now the radiation was mostly contained to the building, but even a reactor as small as this one could produce enough of it to kill people miles away, not to mention contaminating water and soil.  If there was something he could do to salvage this situation, he was damn well going to do it.

“Power to the coolant systems has been disrupted.  There are controls in the basement.  However, the amount of radiation near the reactor is approaching an unsafe level, even for you.”  That didn’t deter him.  He flew down the hole cut into the building’s heart.  Thankfully the explosion had cleared a rather obvious path to the source of the problem.  JARVIS’ voice cut through the thundering of his heart in his head.  “I would not recommend–”

“Save it,” Tony snapped as he found his way to the control room, “and help me figure out how to restore power.”  Part of the room was burning.  The explosion had damaged a few of the consoles and collapsed most of the hallway that led down to the reactor itself.  People were dead on the floor and in their chairs.  Red lights bathed the room in blood.  Tony moved quickly to the control panel, his keen eyes and fast mind devouring the scene before him.  It took him all of a second to find the breakers for the coolant system.  He flipped them, praying the mechanics of the reactor were still intact enough to function, and they immediately flashed back to life.  Tony watched in satisfaction as the diagrams on his HUD and on the computer monitors still functioning indicated the cooling systems were coming back online.  The pumps began to fill the reactor with water.

“Sir, the fire suppression systems inside the reactor are also disabled.”  Tony glanced around for the controls to those and found them on the opposite wall.  He furiously typed on the keyboard within the console.  The building rattled and vibrated; he didn’t know why, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.  Another second more had Tony reinstating the emergency fail safes inside the reactor that had been knocked out by whatever power surge that had killed the coolant systems.  The fire suppressants came back online with a loud whine, and immediately the temperature inside the reactor began to drop.

Tony breathed a quick sigh of relief.  At least thermonuclear meltdown had been averted.  “Stark!”  Fury’s voice cut over the communications link.  “What’s your status?”

“Looks like the coolant system of their reactor was compromised.  Can’t tell you how.  We’ve got heavy radiation contamination here,” he responded.  “No obvious signs of survivors.”

“Rogers and Banner?  Sterns?”

Tony struggled to contain his despair.  “Are you deaf?” he snapped irately.  “No survivors.”  The other side of the communications line was silent, though whether with shock or anger or surprise or flat-out denial Tony couldn’t say.  All of those things were slamming through him at once, battering him until he could barely think.  This wasn’t possible.  _All_ of this had led to a single explosion, and that had taken Steve’s life and Bruce’s life and…  _God damn it!_ He rocketed back out of the hole as the warnings about exposure got to the point where he knew he couldn’t ignore them anymore.  “We’re going to need containment teams–”

A familiar roar stopped him, and he whirled.  It echoed through the remains of the building, shaking the punctured floors and burning supports.  Tony stopped where he was and rotated in the air, glancing at the corner of the HUD as JARVIS attempted to localize the sound.  It was more than fifty meters to his left and down.  He wasted not a second, firing Iron Man’s palm repulsors and jetting back into the interior of the building.  He smashed through doors and blew his way through walls, daring to hope.  And then he burst into something that had probably once been a large room but was now mostly a humongous, staggeringly tall pile of crushed wreckage on the floor.  It was compacted so tightly that many of the pieces had actually _fused_ together, melted into one another by the looks of it, forming an impenetrable mountain of debris that was still unbelievably hot and burning from the force required to do something like this.  The fire from the explosion had burned hot and fast, but it didn’t look like it had come this far.  Tony could barely believe it.  And he could barely accept the explanation that slashed across his mind.  _Steve did this.  And Steve caused the power surge in the reactor.  And Steve…  Oh, God._

Another muffled cry emanated from beneath the debris.  Iron Man’s sensors couldn’t effectively penetrate the tons and tons of compressed metal and concrete, but Tony knew who was under there.  “Hold on!”  However, there wasn’t anything he could do to move any of it.  He wasn’t strong enough, and it would take a lot more power than he could generate to cut through it with any amount of speed.  “Shit.”

As it turned out, though, he didn’t need to help.  The cry he was hearing got louder and louder and more frustrated.  _Angrier._ The mountain in front of him rumbled and shifted, cracking apart as it was pounded from within, and a second later a green fist punched through it.  The Hulk roared in what Tony could only consider to be desperation as he fought and struggled to free himself from the cage of metal.  He could see now that the Hulk had had to push through something more than ten feet thick, and it had crushed him down to the ground on all sides.  Tony was baffled by it.

Finally, the Hulk climbed out of the wreckage.  When he did, he howled again, loudly enough to shake the remains of the building around them.  Tony took a step back.  “Easy,” he said gently.  Over the communications link, he calmly declared, “I have Banner.”

Clint’s voice tensely demanded, “What about Steve?  Is he okay?  Is Bruce okay?”

“Uh, I’ll get back to you.”  The monster turned to him, fury bright and threatening in his gaze.  There was no recognition in his dark eyes.  He was beyond control.  Tony had never seen the Hulk so unrestrained.  Not since the footage of him fighting the Abomination.  There was no sign of Bruce in his glower.  Bruce wasn’t _there_.  “Bruce?  Bruce, it’s Tony.”

The Hulk sneered, breathing heavily and looking extremely pissed off.  Terrified, Tony took a step back, trying to seem nonthreatening, and nearly tripped over a mangled body.  He looked down.  It was Rappaccini, most definitely dead if her head being twisted completely around on her neck was any indication.  He took a second to glance around and found _everyone_ was dead.  Broken and mutilated and shot.  Dozens of researchers and soldiers.  _What the hell happened?_ he wondered in complete horror.  _What did Steve do?_

There was no time to figure that out now.  The Hulk was eyeing him like a convenient target upon which he could vent some of his wrath.  Tony swallowed through a thick throat, trying not to panic.  “Tony.  You know me.  Science bro.  Your best friend.  Right?”  It wasn’t right at all.  The Hulk grunted and stepped closer, scowling menacingly, towering over Iron Man.  Tony tried again.  “You live in my tower, we hang out and work together…  Bruce, please.  I know you’re in there.  Come on.  It’s me.  You don’t want to hurt me.”

But the Hulk did.  The Hulk wanted to _smash_ something.

That huge green fist snapped toward him.  Tony had barely a second to fire the thrusters in his boots and jump clear before the ground was pulverized where he had been standing.  He abandoned any hope of reasoning with the beast – _what happened to Bruce?_ – and rocketed up and out of the remains of the building.  The HUD flashed with warnings that Tony didn’t need to see or hear to know the Hulk was chasing after him.  Perhaps running wasn’t the best course, but he had no idea what else he could do.  He couldn’t face the Hulk at all, let alone the Hulk this enraged and wild.  Terror coiled tightly in his belly, constricting his chest until he couldn’t breathe.  He heard a roar behind him and something knocked against his ankle.  His heart leapt into his throat when he realized the Hulk had jumped after him and tried to grab his leg and just _barely_ missed.  It was enough of a hit, however, to knock him off course and the next thing he knew he was spiraling down into the forest.  Tree branches and trunks were a blur as he spun and rammed into them.  He hit the ground hard, sliding through soil and moss and leaving a huge rut in the earth.

Tony hardly had a second to swallow the blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek during the impact.  The furious scream came first, and then a shadow blotted out the sun overhead.  Trees shattered.  He rolled just in time as the Hulk pounded into the earth where he had been.  Wet dirt exploded up dozens of feet into the air, and a tree fell when its roots were crushed.  Tony tried to scramble away but the dizziness, pain, and shock left him reeling.  That massive hand wrapped around his chest, squeezing, and his armor bent and cracked and broke beneath the strain.  Tony screamed in horror.  This was it.  This was how he was going to die.  The Hulk was going to squish him like a bug.

He didn’t think.  He just did.  His suit was failing all around him, but there was still enough power to open the face plate.  His only chance was that the Hulk recognized _him_.  “Bruce,” he gasped with what little air was left in his lungs.  “Bruce, _please_ …”

The murderous eyes staring into his went wide with realization.  The Hulk’s huge hand opened, and Tony fell back to the forest floor with a heavy clank.  He barely clung onto consciousness, squirming away.  His armor was so bent into his chest that he couldn’t breathe, and without being asked JARVIS activated the emergency release mechanisms to relieve the pressure constricting his torso.  The damaged, sparking remains of Iron Man fell away.

“Oh, God,” gasped a miserable voice in his ear.  A hand fell onto his shoulder – a human hand – and he whirled around to see Bruce nearly naked and wavering on his feet behind him.  His face was absolutely white with horror, and he was shaking.  “Oh, God.  Tony, I – I tried to stop it.  I was trying to stop him and it just built up and he didn’t like being trapped and I just couldn’t – I – I–”

“It’s alright,” Tony gasped, fighting to catch his wind and rise above the ache assaulting his entire body.  It wasn’t alright, but Bruce had controlled himself and he was relatively okay and there would be time to deal with the trauma of all of this later (hopefully).  He grabbed Bruce’s hand.  “Where’s Steve?  Where is he?”

Bruce squeezed his eyes shut in misery and went down on his knees.  “I couldn’t do it,” he whispered.  “I just couldn’t.  I held the Hulk back, and he got so angry.  He got away from me.  I’m so sorry, Tony.”

Tony finally regained enough of himself to grab Bruce’s shoulders.  “What happened? What couldn’t you do?”

Bruce’s voice was rough with emotion he was barely controlling.  “He begged me to kill him.  He made me promise I would, and I _knew_ it was the right thing to do, but I still couldn’t–”

“Steve is under Sterns’ control?”

“Yes, but not willingly.  That’s why I couldn’t–”

The sound of engines overhead drew their attention, and Tony looked up to see the quinjet hovering just above the canopies of the towering pines.  The rear of the jet opened and Thor jumped out.  He landed on the ground beside the two men, his bearded face pinched in concern.  “The captain?” he asked.

Tony couldn’t manage much more than a solemn shake of his head.

* * *

“Steve’s fighting!  Do you understand me?  He’s not dead.  He’s not lost.  Sterns was barely holding onto him.  Steve was _fighting_ him.  We can’t just go after him like he’s some kind of monster!”

 _Speaking of fights,_ Tony thought over the pounding misery in his head.  The argument raging around him was tense and teeming with anguish.  Nobody was calm.  Nobody was sure.  After the explosion in New Mexico, Clint had flown them back to New York as fast as possible.  They’d set the quinjet down on top of Stark Tower, Tony hauling with Thor’s help the remains of his suit into the remains of his building.  In the last few days, the repair crews had at least stabilized the top floors, but there was still a lot of damage.  They could have – and maybe should have – gone back to SHIELD, but frankly Tony didn’t want anything to do with SHIELD right now.  SHIELD couldn’t fix this.  SHIELD might have been faced with the same looming disaster, but it wasn’t going to be up to them to stop it.  The Avengers were assembled, and they were closing ranks.  They had to.  They had to try to regroup and collect themselves and figure out what to do.  There weren’t options, and they all knew it.

Fury’s grim face was plastered all over the large display in one of the workshops at the top of the Tower.  The Avengers were gathered there, feeling lost and shattered.  They’d only fought together as a team once during the Battle of New York, and after that they’d gone their separate ways.  Even still, Steve’s absence, the man they had all trusted to lead them with a level head and an unwavering plan, was extremely noticeable and ridiculously disturbing.  Natasha’s face had regained its stoic control, but they all knew it was just a mask.  Clint stood beside her, quiet and crushed, but it was obvious all of his rage and grief was right below the surface and simmering.  Thor was pacing, visibly fighting to keep his temper under check.  Though he was a late-comer to this nightmare, he’d very quickly realized just how dire and desperate the situation was.  Bruce was _yelling_.  Bruce never yelled.  Bruce never seemed this lost and riled.  Bruce who always kept himself so tightly composed and mellow, who monitored his own emotions out of fear of upsetting anyone and upsetting himself, who always was so calm…  Bruce was downright livid.  And Tony was simply fighting to overcome his headache and work on restoring his suit.  He knew he was going to need it.

“Banner is right,” Thor added hotly.  “If Steven is struggling against his captor, we cannot hurt him.  He is an innocent who through no fault of his own has been turned against us and against himself.”

Fury was unimpressed by the display of solidarity.  Or, if he was touched by it, he wasn’t letting it show.  He couldn’t.  “Tell me what other choice we have and, _believe me_ , I will take it.  The Council isn’t willing to wait anymore.  Containment is no longer an option.  Containment went out the window when AIM’s lab blew.  We’re damn lucky we don’t have a plume of radiation hovering over New Mexico right now.”  That was true enough.  From Bruce’s report, lucky didn’t begin to describe it.  “We have no idea where Sterns went or what he’s planning–”

“I’m sure we’ll find out,” Tony muttered disdainfully.  His own temper was fraying rapidly, given how much his head and heart and every damn part of him hurt.  He slammed his wrench down on the work table.  “This suit is shot to hell.  JARVIS, let’s get the next one prepped.”  He looked up and saw the team watching him.  “Look, if Sterns’ control over Steve is as tenuous as Bruce says it is, he’ll make a move fast.  He’s too smart not to realize this isn’t going to last long.”

“Any idea what his endgame is, Doctor Banner?” Fury asked.  “Did he say anything?”

“Aside from gloating about building the most powerful weapon the world’s ever seen out of Captain America, no,” Bruce bitterly snapped.  He slowed down, like he realized he needed to explain.  Like he was remembering none of the rest of them had seen what he’d seen.  Tony wasn’t sure if he should be grateful or not.  “Steve’s powers have been amplified.  _Exponentially._   He’s beyond dangerous.  His capacity to manipulate energy, particularly kinetic energy, is immeasurable.  He can do it on a molecular level, maybe even an atomic level.  After the second procedure–”

Clint blanched. “ _Second_ procedure?” he interrupted.  His face shifted from horror to rage.  His hands balled into fists at his sides, and he looked like he wanted to murder someone.  “Christ.”

“Before everything went to hell back there, Dan’s drug had fully mutated 95% of Steve’s DNA,” Bruce went on.  “His neurologic activity has increased far beyond the bounds of a normal human.  Far beyond the bounds of _possibility._ ”

“Am I to understand that is bad?” Thor asked, squinting.

“That’s _incredibly_ bad.  The physiological distress caused by using his powers has decreased as well, though I’m not sure how much of that is because the pain is better or because Sterns is helping him mitigate it or ignore it.  It doesn’t matter.  The point is there’s no limit to what he can do.”

“And there’s no cure,” Fury said.  It was less of a question and more of a confirmation.

Bruce’s restraint was snapping.  His raised his hands theatrically as if to demonstrate he had nothing before letting them uselessly drop to his thighs with a loud slap.  “No.  I don’t know.  I couldn’t come up with one.  I’m sorry, okay?  I’m sorry.”  If Bruce Banner, the world’s best mind in biochemistry, couldn’t find an answer, then there wasn’t one.  There just wasn’t.  Tony felt this hope he’d kept inside him from the beginning that they could fix this finally and at long last die completely.  It _hurt_.  Pathetically and piteously.  _Miserably_.  It really hurt.

The silence that followed was damning.  Fury shook his head.  “Then there’s no choice.  We have to destroy him.”

“With what?” Tony hotly asked.  His patience was spent.  “He can _control_ energy.  What bomb do you want to throw at him that he can’t throw back at us?  What gun do you want to shoot at him?  And in case you guys failed to notice, Steve had our best weapon pretty effectively caged.”

“No,” Bruce answered.  His voice softened, drawing the attention of the team and Fury.  He winced slightly, his once fiery gaze now cold with pain and directed at his shoes.  “I was holding the Hulk back.  I didn’t want to hurt him.”

Fury hesitated for a moment, like he didn’t know how to phrase an uncomfortable question that had to be asked.  “So the Hulk could stop him then,” he finally said.

“If by ‘stop’ you really mean ‘kill’, then yes,” Bruce sharply answered, hurt filling his eyes.  Tony grimaced and looked away.  God, how the hell had it come to this?  Bruce shook his head, unwilling to look at anyone directly, and settled his gaze on the New York City skyline beyond the windows of Tony’s workshop.  Outside the summer day was bright and blue and beautiful.  Inside, there was nothing but darkness.  “Steve’s still _human_ , well, at least as human as he was before.  And I know we all like to think the legends about Captain America being invincible are true, but they’re not.  He can die.  He probably will.  It’s not stoppable.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Clint snapped.

Bruce sighed.  His frustration wasn’t dissipating really, but now it was marred with disgust and worry.  “You saw it, Clint.  I don’t think Steve’s body isn’t going to be able to take much more.  His vital signs were extremely unstable.  The serum is keeping him alive, but it’s so suppressed that it’s not going to be able to do it much longer.”

“So the question becomes how much damage can Sterns make him do before he dies,” Natasha said.  Her voice was even and emotionless, but her eyes were filled with sadness.

Aggravated, Bruce shook his head. “I don’t know!  Potentially.”  They were all displeased with the lack of information, and that made Bruce even angrier.  “ _Nothing_ about this has been terribly predictable.  I don’t know what to tell you!  I wish I had answers!  I wish I had found a goddamn way to stop this!  I wish–”  His voice failed him, like he realized he was stepping too close to the edge and was pulling himself back.  He closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath.  “The only thing I know _for sure_ is that Steve was fighting him.”

That soft, solemn declaration shook them.  Tony glanced at Clint, but Clint was looking at his boots.  His eyes glimmered ever so slightly with tears.  Thor ceased in his pacing and winced as though physically distressed.  He murmured something softly, an Asgardian prayer perhaps.  Fury sighed.  “The question is the same as it was,” he said.  “Can the Hulk kill Rogers?”

Bruce looked up and glared at Fury.  The rage came back hot and quick.  “Bruce,” Natasha said softly.  Tony wasn’t sure if it was for comfort or out of concern or some sort of gentle warning.  And he wasn’t sure it mattered.  Nothing was going to make this better or different.  Nothing could sugar-coat it or change it, so why delude themselves.  SHIELD was assembling the Avengers to kill their captain.

Bruce glanced at Natasha.  It took a lot of obvious effort, but he restrained himself.  Tony knew Bruce put a lot of stock in logic.  He was doing it now.  He closed his eyes in defeat, in surrender to reason.  “If I let the Hulk go and he can get close enough to him…  Yes, I’m pretty sure he can kill him.”

Another moment of tense, miserable silence followed that solemn announcement.  And then the rage snapped loose, but it wasn’t from Bruce.  “This is bullshit!” Clint shouted.  He turned to Fury, and with a blink those tears were gone, replaced by anger and determination.  “Sir, you know Steve.  You _know_ him.  You said it yourself: he isn’t going to break.  He didn’t, and he won’t.  If he’s fighting, we have to give him a chance.  We can’t just give up on him!”

“There’s no choice.  It’s too late.  His mind isn’t his own anymore,” Fury argued.

“Then we help him get it back!” Clint roared.  “Sterns said people with a strong will are difficult to control.  And Bruce said he needed to be near to Steve, maybe even _touching_ him, to keep him under his influence!  So we just need to get them apart and then–”

“And then what?” Fury asked.  The question was angry, but the ire wasn’t directed at Clint.  “If there’s no cure, how long will it be before someone else gets a hold of him?  What if this doesn’t kill him?  How long until he finally does break?  He’s volatile.  Aggressive.  Uncontrollable and unpredictable.”

“That’s a load of bullshit,” Clint harshly snapped, “He’s Captain America.  I know him, probably better than any of you.  I know he won’t give in.  He won’t stop fighting.  Ever.”

Fury’s voice dropped to a softer tone.  “If you know him, then you know he would rather die than be used against us.”

Clint blanched.  “That’s not fair!” he snapped.  “That isn’t goddamn _fair_!  We need to have faith in him!  You know he would have faith in us!  You know it!”

“Clint, I know that and you know that.  We all know that.  But the Council isn’t going to be convinced,” Natasha said quietly.  She wasn’t saying it to be cruel.  It was simply a fact.  “They won’t risk the world’s security on faith.  And we can’t, either.”

It seemed mundane and ridiculous because that particular statement wasn’t any worse or more devastating than all the others preceding it, but for some reason that pushed Bruce away.  He turned and stalked out of the room, leaving the newly replaced doors of the workshop.  Tony watched him go.  He finally snapped from his angry haze out of concern for his friend, but instead of following Bruce, he turned a piercing glare at Fury.  “You can’t dump this all on him,” he said.  “You can’t put this responsibility on him!”

“Sounds like Cap already did,” Fury said like that justified it.

“Can’t you see how hard he’s tried to stop this?”

“No one is blaming Doctor Banner for anything,” Fury retorted.  He didn’t like the implication that he was a heartless bastard, even if Tony rather thought it was true.  “There’s no good answer.  This is a screwed up situation.  There’s no way out of it, and I’m sorry that it’s come to this.  I really am.  You think it doesn’t bother me or that it doesn’t hurt?  Rogers is a good man, an asset to everyone, and he didn’t deserve _any_ of this.  You think it doesn’t piss the hell out of me that we couldn’t protect him?  We have the strongest intelligence network in the world and the smartest minds in security and science.  We have the Avengers.  And we were outgunned and outsmarted by a little man from inside one of our own prison cells.  You think that doesn’t burn me?  It does!  You think it doesn’t eat me up inside that the best outcome now is that Rogers dies before we have to kill him?  But I don’t think that will happen.  If he’s strong enough to fight…”  Fury looked away, rattled more than any of them had ever seen.

In the silence that followed, Tony shifted his weight.  Shame and anger colored his cheeks red.  “God damn it,” he whispered.  He wasn’t going to help bring down Captain America.  _He wasn’t_.  This wasn’t happening.  It hadn’t come to this.  There still had to be an answer, _something_ they could try, something they could do!  _It wasn’t going to come to this!_

But it had.  And there was nothing left.  Steve’s voice came to him in a memory from when they’d lost Phil Coulson.  _“Sometimes there isn’t a way out, Tony.”_ They had no choice.  No goddamn choice.  No way to cut the wire.  Nothing but the sacrifice play.  Steve had called it weeks ago when he’d offered up himself to a madman in order to save his friends.

“If we are forced to take Steven’s life, I will…”  Thor shifted uncomfortably for a moment, but he was too much of a hardened warrior to be rattled by difficult choices.  “I will do what must be done.”

Clint closed his eyes and looked away, his jaw clenched.  Then he, too, left the room, every line of his body hard with rage and grief.  Natasha was still pale and shaken from the trauma earlier that day, but she nodded to Fury.  And that was it.  It was decided.  When the call came from SHIELD and the World Security Council to put down Steve, they would follow it.

Tony wasn’t used to admitting to his own helplessness, but he had to now.  Fury was talking, explaining about SHIELD’s efforts to track Sterns after the explosion in New Mexico, about the country being placed on high alert for the next attack that had to be coming, about their efforts to reinforce major metropolitan areas with increased security measures (like extra cops and more check points could possibly make a difference now and against someone with the capacity to essentially create atomic bombs with his thoughts).  Tony stopped listening.  He was a genius in his own right and damn proficient at recognizing patterns and predicting how things would play out.  And he didn’t need to be clairvoyant to see that all of this would soon come to a head.  He’d never met Sterns, never even seen him face to face, but from all accounts he was a smug, showy bastard.  The first thing the Leader would likely do with his new toy would be to send it against its former teammates and friends.  All these supervillain types, Sterns and Loki and Killian and Hammer…  All of them had been smug, showy bastards.  Sterns would come to them.  Tony could damn well guarantee that.

Fury had one last thing to say.  “Take a minute to get yourselves grounded.”  He said it as if a minute would matter now, as if there was _anything_ that mattered now.  After that, the meeting, if it could even be called that, dispersed.

Tony limped wearily to the elevator, acutely feeling every bruise and bump and scrape and scar, and thought he should get some sleep while he could.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept peacefully, the last time things had been normal.  When his biggest problem had been how to propose to Pepper.  God, he’d actually been worked up about that.  Whined about it and carried on about it when _this_ had been looming before them.  He’d been a goddamn moron.  Once he was inside the elevator, he sagged against the wall and scrubbed a hand down his face.  “J, is Pepper on the plane?”

“Not yet, sir.  The traffic in the Midtown Tunnel is quite heavy.  I estimate a thirty-four minute delay before she reaches LaGuardia.”  This time it hadn’t taken much to convince Pepper to leave.  She’d taken a single look at Tony and his bruised face and defeated eyes and agreed to go to DC.  She’d kissed him tenderly, clung to him for an endless moment of comfort that unfortunately had to end, and now she was gone.

Tony tried to focus.  “Where’s Bruce?”

Even JARVIS sounded worn and beaten down.  “In his lab.  I warned him the area has not yet been cleared by the construction crew.  Shall I take you there?”

“Might as well.”  The elevator dinged a moment later and deposited him on the 31st floor.  The hallway before him had new drywall that hadn’t been fully taped or mudded and sanded yet.  There were construction tarps and tools strewn about.  Tony walked down the hallway, trying to ignore the gaping wounds still not patched from days ago when Steve had first lost control.  He stepped over some wreckage that wasn’t yet cleared and pushed aside tarps and walked into the remains of Bruce’s lab.

A lot of it had burned when fire had torn through it as Steve had battered the top of the Tower.  The floors were scorched, long, ugly black scars marking where the flames had gouged into tile and sheetrock and carpet.  The soot piled high in some spots where the fires had burned particularly violently before the suppression systems had kicked in and doused the floor.  Many of the workbenches were nothing more than twisted, broken slabs of sooty steel.  Furniture was destroyed, bent beyond recognition, and everywhere there was broken equipment.  Busted computers and screens and machines.  The evidence of shattered thoughts and abandoned ideas.

Bruce stood near his workbench.  His laptop was smashed.  His work lay burnt and mutilated and scattered all over the scorched floor.  _Everything_ was ruined.  “Hey,” Tony said softly.  Bruce didn’t turn.  His body was rigid.  _God, we can’t do this with him like this…_   If Bruce wasn’t with them, if the Hulk wasn’t under control…  Tony couldn’t let that happen.  And he couldn’t let his friend suffer.  He didn’t know what to say, so he blurted out the first pile of placating shit that came to mind.  “It’s not your fault.”

Bruce actually laughed.  “You weren’t there, Tony.  You have no idea how _much_ this is my fault.”

“For God’s sake, Bruce, you didn’t do this to him!”

Bruce whirled.  He was _unhinged_ , barely hanging on.  Tony thought his skin looked green and his eyes looked locked in some sort of grotesque state between Banner and the Hulk.  They had since leaving New Mexico.  “Well, I sure as hell didn’t do anything to stop it.  It was like…  It was like standing there and watching someone being tortured.  Christ, Tony.  And I kept telling myself I was there to do something to help Steve–”

“You were,” Tony firmly said, braving a few steps closer to the other man.  If he didn’t do something now, they’d really be lost.  “You were, Bruce.  Don’t believe Lahey’s bullshit or Sterns’ bullshit or your _own_ bullshit.”

“I couldn’t help him.  God, I _tried_ , Tony.”  Tears filled Bruce’s eyes, and he looked away to hide them.  “But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t find the answers…  I never wanted them so badly, not even when I was looking for myself.”

Tony grabbed Bruce’s shoulders and straightened his slumped form.  “That’s because you’re a good man.  You’re not this monster that you think you are.  You’re not!  Listen to me for once, Bruce!”

“You don’t know what I am,” Bruce returned.

“Yes, I do.  So you’ve got a dark side.  _So what?_   We all do.  _Everyone_ does.  Even Rogers.”

Bruce shook his head.  “No, not him.  I saw his dark side, Tony.  I saw what Sterns had to do to drag it out of him.  And even then he fought it.  Even in so much pain and so badly screwed up and he had every _reason_ to kill all of us…  He fought it.  He fought to not kill Monica even after everything she did to him.  Sterns had his fingers down in Steve’s mind and he still stayed true to who he was!  I’ve _never_ fought that hard to be good.  _Never._ ”

“So what?” Tony snapped again.  “That doesn’t mean you’re a monster, Bruce!  You don’t have to measure up to him!  You don’t have to be perfect to do the right thing!”  Bruce tried to pull away, but Tony wouldn’t let him.  “No, you _listen_.  Something horrible happened to you.  Something that should have killed you.  And it took you a while, but you figured out how to turn that horrible thing into a good thing.  A _really_ good thing.  And Steve would be the first to tell you that we would have _lost_ the Battle of New York if it hadn’t been for the Hulk.  It takes a hell of a lot of strength to make something so terrible into something so good.  Maybe even more strength than being born good and staying good takes.”

Bruce’s eyes softened slightly, like he was honestly considering what Tony was telling him.  Tony hoped so.  “ _None_ of us have to measure up to Captain America.  He never asked us to, and we don’t need to.  We gotta stop giving ourselves shit for our mistakes.  We’re fine just the way we are.  Scars and anger and messed up pasts and dark sides and everything.  And so what if we create our own demons.  So what if the man makes the monster or the man makes the hero.  _So what._   It doesn’t mean you can’t fix yourself.  It doesn’t mean it won’t work.  It does work, and we did fix ourselves.  I did and you did. We all did because we’re the good guys.  We’re here trying to protect the world and avenge our friend.” 

It was true.  Hearing himself say it, Tony knew it.  Bruce did, too.  But it wasn’t so easy to accept.  There was some old saying about that, wasn’t there? Something about changing the things you can change, accepting the things you can’t, and having the strength to know the difference.  Bruce sighed.  He grabbed Tony, grabbed him hard, and hugged him tightly.   It was a weird thing for both of them, both of them with their trust issues and hang-ups about personal contact and keeping distance.  But Tony didn’t hesitate in hugging him back just as firmly.  “I don’t know if I can do it,” Bruce confessed in a quiet murmur against Tony’s ear.  “I don’t know if I can.”

“You won’t have to alone,” Tony said.  “We’re with you.  And Steve made you promise, right?”  Bruce nodded.  “You know him.  Mr. Battle Strategy.  Master tactician.  Man with the Plan and all of that nonsense.  Point is that he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think you could do it.”

“The Hulk will do it.  I could hardly stop him last time.”

“So don’t.  When the time comes, let him.  Steve knew what he was asking.”

“What if I can’t get him back?  Even during New York, I didn’t let him go completely.  If I stay angry, I can control him a little.  You know that.  But to fight against Steve, I’m going to have to let him have his head.  I do that, and people die.  I almost killed you back in the woods there, remember?”

“As screwed up as this sounds, I guess you need to trust him.”

Bruce choked on a stifled sob.  “I can’t believe it’s come down to this,” he groaned, pulling away from Tony’s embrace.  “Sterns was right, the son of a bitch.  Life certainly likes its ironies.”

“I don’t know about that, but whatever.”  Tony watched Bruce shuffle away.  He felt a little better, comforted by his own words, and he hoped Bruce did, too.  Bruce’s form was crushed like the weight of the world was driving him down.  That wasn’t far from the truth.  “Listen, I know this is probably a futile and delusional suggestion, but you should really try to get some sleep.  Who knows how long it will be before Sterns comes knocking, but I doubt it’ll be long.  Your suite’s safe for you to–”

Bruce suddenly dropped to a crouch.  Tony’s heart leapt in sudden worry, fearful that maybe his friend had been hurt more by the reactor explosion in New Mexico than he was letting on.  The Hulk should have protected him from the radiation exposure, but it wasn’t like this was something they’d ever experienced before.  He took a step toward Banner.  “Whoa.  Whoa!  You okay?”

But Bruce wasn’t in pain.  He was pushing the sooty debris aside frantically, like he’d seen something.  He rammed his elbow into the mangled workbench and shoved it away with a loud scrape.  Then he breathed a nearly silent, “Oh, my God.”

Tony stumbled closer.  “What?  _What?_ ”  He looked over Bruce’s shoulder.  On the floor, spread a few feet along the scorched tile and under the damaged furniture and debris, was green.  Leaves and stems.  It took Tony’s beleaguered mind a second to realize what he was seeing.  What it was.  “Is that…”

“Oh, my God,” Bruce said again.  His voice was weak with dawning realization.

“What?”

Bruce turned sharply and regarded Tony with nothing but certainty in his eyes.  “I know how to save Steve.”

* * *

“You can’t possibly be serious.”

“I am.  I’m _dead_ serious.”

“Extremis.  The stuff that turned Killian and his cronies into super-powered exploding fire zombies.  You want to give Rogers Extremis.”

Bruce was irritated at his tone, but Tony couldn’t help himself.  This was _insane._   “This is the only way.  The only chance we have.”

The team was gathered in Bruce’s lab, gathered around Bruce’s miraculous tomato plant.  Tony had to admit it was pretty amazing.  Last he’d known, none of Bruce’s plants had survived the infusions with Extremis.  This one had apparently not only survived that, but it had survived the subsequent fire that had ravaged the lab.  And it was flourishing.  It was a huge, hearty thing that had grown out of soot and a little soil, shooting up through the remains of the workbench.  Its stems were thick, its leaves green and lush and verdant, and its fruit was huge and plentiful and healthy.  As incredible and unbelievable as it seemed, Bruce’s experiment had _worked_.

And it hadn’t been working when Tony had last talked to him about it.  Admittedly, everything after he’d been shot in Lahey’s lab was a little bit of a blur, and he hadn’t even thought about Bruce’s quest to make enhanced plants for days, not since before they’d gone to meet Lahey.  But he was pretty sure Bruce had been about to abandon his project fairly defeated.  Yet here this plant was.  So either Bruce had found a way to stop Extremis from killing everything it touched, or he had found a way to get some sort of sample of the super soldier serum and put the two together.

Tony knew right away it was the latter.  Bruce still looked shocked, staring at the plant seemingly growing out of the floor of the lab.  “This plant died.  I’m sure of it.  Right before Steve came in that day and everything went to hell, this plant incinerated.  Yet here it is.  Wow.  And look how it’s grown over the past few days.  It _worked_.  My last mixture of Extremis with the super soldier serum worked.”

Tony glanced at Clint, who looked completely lost.  Natasha shook her head, staring at the massive plant and then at Bruce.  “You were experimenting on…”

“I know.  It was wrong.”  Bruce admitted it but didn’t seem to care.  He was far too excited to be bothered by the obvious ethical implications of what he was saying.  “But it worked.  The serum and Extremis are compatible.  You know what this means, don’t you?”

“Wait, wait,” Clint said.  He was pale and exasperated.  “You want to introduce _another_ drug into this disaster?  I thought Extremis was bad.  Deadly.”

“It is.  It was.  We fixed it,” Bruce said.

“Slow down.  Start over,” Clint snapped.  “What do you mean you fixed it?”

Tony sighed.  “Bruce and I figured out a way to turn off the part that causes you to go psychotic with rage and spontaneously combust.”  Thor grimaced and shook his head in complete confusion.  “Unfortunately, turning that off watered down all the cool stuff to the point of it not being worth much of anything.  You know, the regenerating missing limbs and massive physical power and super speed.”

“That version of Extremis isn’t going to cut it.  We need the original one,” Bruce said quickly.

Tony looked at him like he was crazy.  He was.  Definitely out of his goddamn mind.  “Right.  Because things aren’t quite _screwed up_ enough.  Extremis will kill him.  Or worse it’ll make him _stronger_.”

Bruce glanced at Tony.  “You were right.  What you said back before AIM kidnapped Steve.”

“Huh?  What did I say?”

“I should have listened to you from the beginning.  I’ve thinking about this the wrong way _from the beginning_.  I’ve been thinking this whole time that we needed a stabilizing agent,” Bruce said, excitement roughening his voice.  He had gotten another laptop, and he was typing furiously.  “Something to slow down the genetic mutations in Steve’s cells.  Something to stop the war, so to speak.  But I was wrong, and you were right.  What we need is something to help the super soldier serum beat back Dan’s drug.”

He swung his laptop around and showed them data and figures.  Tony digested it in a matter of seconds.  The others looked on helplessly.  “This is…” Tony said, squinting as he tried to put the information together.

“This is from that plant,” Bruce quickly explained.  “I just ran it.  That molecule there.  That’s the super solder serum bound together with Extremis, at least as much of the serum as we’ve been able to identify.  Together they’re completely, _one hundred percent_ stable.  Chemically.  Genetically.  And the plant is healthy.  Look at it.”  The team still didn’t understand.  Tony was starting to, but he didn’t like where this was going.  He didn’t like it because he had a mounting suspicion that Bruce was right.  But it was just that: a suspicion.  There was going to be no way to prove this was going to work.

“I am afraid I do not understand this,” Thor admitted.

“Likewise,” Natasha muttered.

Bruce quickly launched into an explanation.  “AIM developed Extremis to make super soldiers, but it acts on the body in a completely different way than the serum in Steve.  Erskine’s serum takes the body and enhances what’s there, amplifying it and bringing it to the next level.  Extremis doesn’t care what it has to work with.  It just pours energy into everything.  It tries to access parts of our DNA that govern regeneration and modifies them to increase output by drawing biochemical power from other parts of the body.  If it worked it would be significantly more potent than the super soldier serum, but it’s fundamentally flawed because the reaction that produces cellular regeneration also produces too much heat.”

“Hence the fire zombies,” Tony added.

“And mitigating that problem reduces Extremis’ efficiency until you’re down to nothing.  And it’s transient; you need to keep taking it, which causes the release of more thermal energy until–”

“What does this have to do with Steve?” Clint interrupted.  He was obviously out of patience for science.  He had been for days.

Bruce sighed.  “I thought the serum would be a stabilizing agent for Extremis, hence why I was trying to combine them.  Something to control the excess energy and reduce its damaging side effects.  And it is, hence this.”  He gestured again to his laptop.  “But what if it could work the other way?  Extremis could act as a _catalyst_ for the serum.  It might be able to do exactly what Tony suggested days ago: power the serum to the point where it can completely reverse the damage caused by Dan’s drug.”

When Bruce put it that way, it sounded almost possible.  At their lost, bewildered, and uncertain expressions, he showed them a simulation.  Tony watched as it began with Steve’s cells, 95% of them completely mutated by Lahey’s drug.  With the addition of Extremis, the serum kicked into high gear, _rapidly_ reducing the number of affected cells.  The serum used the excess power and regenerative effects of Extremis to overcome the systemic damage.  Lahey’s drug was defeated at an exponential rate.  According to Bruce’s estimations and taking into account the sheer power of the things involved, the whole thing could be over in a matter of seconds.

“How do you know Extremis won’t interact with Lahey’s drug just as much?” Natasha asked.  “This whole idea is hinged on powering one side of this war.  How do you know it won’t power both?  Or the wrong side?  Like Tony said, what if this makes him stronger?”

“It might,” Bruce conceded.  “But in the end, the serum will win.  The sample of Steve’s blood I used to do this experiment must have already had Dan’s drug in it because it was taken after the incident in Lahey’s lab.  We just didn’t know at the time.  There’s no sign of the drug now.”

“There wasn’t before either, if I’m not mistaken,” Natasha returned.

“And this is data from a plant.  You can’t stretch that to a person!” Clint said.

“You think I don’t know that?” Bruce tightly responded.  “If we had some of Steve’s blood or some CSF samples, I could be sure.  We could try it.  But we don’t.  And there’s no time.  I firmly believe that this is right, though.  If we could get Extremis into the mix, it’ll help the serum defeat Dan’s drug.  I _know_ it.”

“Extremis causes rage,” Tony said.  He couldn’t help himself.  This was insane, even by his standards.  “It causes aggression.  It causes all the same nasty shit that Lahey’s drug causes.  It’s gonna make all of that worse.”

“It might,” Bruce agreed again, “but it’ll be fast.”

Tony was flabbergasted.  “A few seconds might as well be an eternity!  If there’s any speck of Steve’s control left, this will kill it.  There won’t be enough of him left to stop himself, that’s for damn sure.  And there’s no telling what Sterns would do it with that.”

“Then we have to make sure Sterns is dead or otherwise unable to reach Steve.  A lot of his control is hinged on physical contact,” Bruce returned.

“You wish to give someone who already is nearly undefeatable a drug that will make him more so,” Thor said, unable to hide his distaste for the idea.  It was obvious he was trying to understand.  “That is insane.”

“Not to mention there’s no way Sterns is going to let you near him,” Natasha added.  “How would we even inject him to begin with?”

“And even if we could, you said this Extremis/serum concoction killed your plant.  Killed a lot of your plants,” Clint said.  “How the hell is this one alive now?  How can we be sure this isn’t some kind of freak accident?”

“I don’t know!” Bruce admitted.  “How did Steve survive the procedure in Dan’s lab?  Another freak accident?”  Clint was irritated at the argumentative response.  “We don’t know enough about the serum.”

“Exactly, and if this experiment of yours killed your plants…”  Clint shook his head in worry.  “It’ll do the same to Steve.  He won’t survive exposure to anything else.”

“The plant died, yeah, but _look_ at it now!” Bruce replied.  “It came back.  And how is Steve dying from this any worse than Dan’s drug killing him?  Or us killing him?  At least this has a chance of working.”

“Bruce–”

Bruce shook his head.  There was desperation shining bright in his eyes.  And certainty.  So much belief in what he was saying.  Tony had never seen him like this.  “You guys _have_ to believe me.  This is all we’ve got.  I know I don’t have great evidence.  It’s a hypothesis, one I can’t even test let alone prove.  And I know this seems like pouring more fuel onto the fire.  I kept telling everyone not to do that, but I was wrong.  That’s exactly what we need to do.  We need to burn Dan’s drug out of him.  It sounds harsh and dangerous, and it is, but I know it will work.  I know all of this sounds crazy, but this whole damn thing has been crazy from the beginning.”  Bruce’s voice softened, and the excitement dimmed in his eyes.  “Please trust me.  We have to try this.”

The team was silent for an impossibly long moment.  They were searching, searching for answers.  For strength and courage.  For confidence.  For trust in themselves and in each other.  Tony looked at that stupid tomato plant, wondering if this could possibly be the answer.  Science had been continually screwing them over ever since Lahey had tricked them down into his lab.  Maybe faith was what they needed now.

“Sir,” JARVIS’ voice cut through the tense quiet.  “Miss Potts is calling.  She sounds upset.”

Tony’s blood turned to ice water.  JARVIS didn’t wait for him to acknowledge, instead putting Pepper’s call directly through to the audio system in the lab.  “Tony?”

Tony could immediately tell from the tone of her voice that something was really wrong.  “Pepper?  What’s wrong?  Where are you?”

“At the tunnel.  Tony, something’s… something’s happening.  Oh, my God.”  Over the phone line screaming could be heard, loud, desperate, and shrill.  Terrified.  Tony’s eyes went wide and he could barely find it within himself to breathe.  Then there was the sound of the phone falling, cracking loudly, and the line went dead.

“JARVIS!” Tony shouted as he staggered across the room toward the huge windows that gave him a view of the East River.  Then he stopped, the others following him and coming to just as sudden a halt behind him.  It took him a second to pick his jaw up off the floor.  “What the hell is that?”

“I believe that is the Midtown Tunnel,” JARVIS answered.

As incredible as that seemed, it was true.  The tunnel was _rising_ out of the East River, water splitting and spreading as the massive, mile-long structure was pulled from the bottom.  From here it was little more than a gray and brown sludge-covered log.  “Holy shit,” Clint breathed from beside him.  The team watched, glued to their spots and unable to think or speak or move for what seemed to be forever.  Then Clint shook his head.  “You have some of this Extremis stuff ready?”

Bruce nodded.  “Some.”

“We’ll need a large dose considering how fast he metabolizes things,” Tony said softly.

“Right,” Bruce answered.  “I have enough.”

They finally managed to tear their eyes from the disturbing sight before them.  And then they were moving and moving fast.  “Get me as much as you can,” Clint said.  “I can modify a quiver of arrows.  If I can find a shot, I’ll take it.”

“He’ll be able to stop it,” Natasha added.

“Not if we overwhelm him.  We have to overwhelm him.  Distract him,” Clint quickly answered.  “Give him too much to focus on.  Steve’s fast, but he’s not faster than all of us.  And he’s not more powerful than all of us.” 

 _Not yet,_ Tony thought grimly, his panic for Pepper slicing through him.  She couldn’t have been in the tunnel because she’d called and there was no cell reception down there so that meant she was safe, right?  Right?  “You guys get this together.  And call SHIELD.  If we need useless distractions, I’m sure they can provide a shitload.  Thor, you’re with me.  Let’s get out there and try to put an end to this.”

* * *

Tony had seen some incredible things in his life.

Captain America levitating the entirety of the Queens Midtown Tunnel out of the East River was one of them.

Of course, he couldn’t see Steve, even as he sped down the FDR in his brand new (and as yet untested) suit.  All he could see was the tunnel and the East River churning.  Traffic was bumper to bumper on the FDR Drive, stopped in thick lines of cars as people got out to watch in a wide-eyed, terrified stupor.  “Get back in your cars!” roared Iron Man as he flew over.  “Get out of here!  Go, go, go!”

Thor followed in a whiz of air.  The two Avengers stopped, watching in horror as a car fell out of one end of the tunnel.  People were screaming.  Thor moved faster than Tony did, racing beneath the tumbling SUV and snatching it from the air.  He groaned with the effort, carrying it back toward the road and setting it onto the median.  “Shit,” Tony whispered, watching as the integrity of the tunnel started to falter.  His HUD flashed with warnings.  A few more cars spilled from the end of it and landed in the river.  “Thor!”

The Asgardian was back in a flash of red and yellow, and together the two of them worked to fish the cars out of the river before they could sink.  Tony cut through the roof of a sedan.  “Give me your hand!” he yelled to the couple within, and when he had them both, he lifted them out of their vehicle and flew to land.  Once he set them safely to the road, he whirled, scanning the crowd desperately.  Sterns had to be there somewhere.  Steve had to be, too.  “Stop this!” he yelled harshly.  A truck slipped from the back of the tunnel, tumbling down to the waters below.  It landed inverted with a massive splash.  Tony was about to rush to the river, but Thor was there, diving down to reach the driver as the cab descended below the surface.  Tony looked around frantically, searching for Steve or Sterns or Pepper.  _God, where is she?_ “Sterns!  I know you’re here!  Enough!”

Then he spotted them.  Sterns and Steve.  Steve was standing on the edge of the road, his hands pointed at the tunnel and his eyes narrowed.  And Sterns was beside him, his fingers curled possessively around Steve’s shoulder.  The little man was hideous with that humongous tumor on the side of his head.  It was pulsating.  Steve looked like he was dying.  His captors had cut his hair ridiculously short ( _sick bastards_ ), and he was wearing a bloodied, filthy hospital gown and pants.  His face was whiter than snow, even paler with the stubble coating his jaw and his eyes ringed in purple.  His eyes…  They were bright, so bright his pupils were practically invisible.  They glowed blue and white.  Blood dribbled down his lips from his nose.  But his expression was stoic and unflinching.  It was impossible to tell if he was pain, but Tony knew he was.  Sterns wasn’t letting him succumb to it.  _Christ, Clint’s right.  This is going to kill him._

Sterns turned at his shout and patted Steve’s shoulder.  “Alright, kid.  We got their attention.  Put it down.”  Steve grimaced, moving the tunnel through the air and toward the other side of the East River.  “No, no.  In the water.  No.  You don’t listen too well.”  Tony felt his heart thundering in relief as Steve set the tunnel along the park, the entirety of it out of the river.  The vibration from it impacting the ground registered even on their side of the river.

Steve went down to his knees.  Sterns shook his head, grabbing Steve from behind and jabbing his fingers into his captive’s head.  His lips pulled back in a vicious snarl of exertion.  Tony set down a few feet down from them on the FDR, landing on top of a car hood.  “Looks like your weapon isn’t too cooperative,” he sharply announced.

“Yeah,” Sterns agreed.  His own eyes burned in frustration, and he shoved Steve away from him when he was finished.  Steve caught the ground in time but just barely.  He stayed there, trembling and breathing heavily.  “Like I said, it’s a problem.  But I can deal with it.”

“You sure about that?  A smart person would surrender right about now.”  Talking to Sterns was at best trying to squeeze sanity of out a bag of crazy.  But if he could distract him for a while, delay until Banner and the others got here…  At least give Pepper (wherever she was) and the civilians a chance to escape.  JARVIS was scanning for her, but there was no sign of her.  It was excruciatingly difficult to focus, to not run and find her and get her to safety.  But she was one of hundreds if not thousands of innocents in danger.  Maybe even millions if this got out of control.  Tony raised his palm repulsors and aimed them at Sterns.  “Give up.  Let the Cap go and turn yourself in.  This is your chance.  Don’t let it slip away because we sure as shit won’t give you another one.”

Sterns laughed a little.  “Surrender?  What are you, Stark?  Insane?  Or just ridiculously arrogant?”  He shook his head.  “This showdown we’re about to have…  This is the point of it all.  This is where things get interesting.  Not quite sure how it’s going to go.  Usually I have such an easy time predicting stuff, but this is harder because there’s so much emotion and random variability involved.”

Tony was revolted.  “What the hell?  Is all of this just a game to you?  A challenge?”

Sterns shrugged.  “You have no idea how bored a man can get rotting in a cell, especially a man of my intellect.  You start thinking, start playing scenarios out in your head.  Like this one.  For instance: logic would dictate that you Avengers are here to attempt to kill Rogers.  And I’m here to have Rogers kill you.  For years I have been wondering about who will win this fight.  I know how much Captain America means to you, to all of you.  Even you, Stark.  He rubs you the wrong way, gets under your skin and all that, but deep down, I know how much you admire him.  I don’t even need to look into your thoughts to see that.”

“Shut the hell up,” Tony snarled.  He was not going to let Sterns bait and goad him like he had Clint and Bruce.  He refused to be this man’s victim.  “Let Steve go.  Let him go _now._ ”

“No,” Sterns bluntly said.  “Why should I?  I kind of like this arrangement.  Not only do I get to wield the strongest weapon this world has ever seen, I get to watch you and your pathetic Avengers suffer with your guilt.  It’s really an added bonus, how this is just tearing you up inside.”

Tony tried not to be fazed.  “What is you think you’re going to get from this?” he demanded.  “What do you want?  Anything besides power?”

Sterns looked aghast at the question, like the answer was self-evident.  “No, power’s good.  Money’s good.  World domination’s good.  Knowing no one will have the ability to tell me no or shove me into a cell _ever again_ is good.”

“It’s where you belong, you sick piece of shit,” Tony retorted.

“I don’t think so.  Locking up this level of genius?  You think I meant him when I was talking about the greatest weapon in the world?  I meant _me._ I mean, _look_ at what I was able to accomplish from inside SHIELD’s little box.  This?”  Sterns gestured to Steve, who was still kneeling at his feet.  “This is power.  This is raw and unrestrained power.  The very essence of the universe, thrumming underneath my hands.  You’re into building weapons, Stark.  Maybe you quit, but I know you still love it.  The thrill of it, when something you designed comes together just how you envisioned it.  This is _perfection_ , and I made it.  It’s _mine._ ”

“It is not.”  Thor thudded to the ground beside Tony and traded Mjölnir to the other hand.  He looked to Sterns and then to Steve.  His pained eyes betrayed his confidence as he beheld for the first time how much this nightmare had damaged Rogers, who the last he’d seen had been confidently and bravely leading the Avengers against the Chitauri.  Thor sneered at Sterns.  “You are a tiny, pathetic craven hiding behind an innocent shield.  You have bent his will, but you cannot break it.  Release our captain or I will end you!”

“Ah, and so the thunderer arrives.  The more the merrier.  Still, I hope Banner gets here soon.  By now he’s probably realized that this is going to come down to a fight between the Other Guy and Steve here.  He’s not still trying to figure out how to make this… chemical disaster work, is he?  Honestly, I kept telling him he’d find a way to force Lahey’s drug and the super soldier serum to be simpatico, as it were, but it’s impossible.  One side has to win.  It’s unavoidable.”  Sterns shook his head.   “Trust me when I say that _every_ version of this situation has ended with an epic battle.  Good versus evil.  The bad man versus the good man.  The monster versus the hero.  I’m not sure which is which and who is who anymore.”

Tony fought to keep his temper in check.  “Thor’s right.  You’re nothing but a goddamn coward.”

“Excuse me?  I’m not the coward.  I’m here, ready for the fight.  Banner’s hiding from the truth like he always does.”

“Shut up!  Get the hell away from Steve!”  Tony just wanted to bridge the gap between them, to take those few steps and get close to Steve and pull him away.  Pull him back.  Pull him towards them.  “He’s not going to let you use him like this!”

“Oh, he has.  And he will.  You have no idea how much he wants to hurt you.”

 _Bullshit!_ Tony ignored Sterns, no matter how deeply his words cut.  They were lies.  They had to be lies.  He looked to Steve, beaten and barely breathing at Sterns’ feet like an abused slave.  “Steve, it’s Tony.”  Steve didn’t move.  His eyes were subserviently turned to the ground beneath him.  The sight of him so tormented and tortured was devastating.  Tony gritted his teeth and opened Iron Man’s face plate.  “It’s Tony.  Listen to me.  You need to fight him.”

Sterns shook his head in amusement.  “He can’t hear you, Stark, but even if he could, there’s not much left of him to answer. There’s nothing left that cares.  There’s only pain and rage and fear.”

Tony wasn’t going to accept that.  “Steve, people are going to die.  You need to stop.”

“There’s no stopping it.  Want to know what drives Captain America’s darkness?  Want me to tell you all about how much he suffers?  How much he hates?”  Sterns grinned.  “It’s cruel, the way things work out.  It’s a sad fact of life that chaos reigns supreme, entropy and disorder, and peace and calm and the inherent goodness of man…  All of that’s tenuous.  Breakable.”

“Be silent!” raged Thor.  “Steven, my friend, you must listen to us.  Hear my voice!”

“Please, Steve.  Don’t make us fight you.  _Please._   Ignore him.  Get him out of your head.”  It was small, barely even noticeable, but Steve winced.  Something wet dripped from his lowered face.  A drop of sweat or a tear, Tony couldn’t tell.  He could barely breathe for the hope surging through him.  “Come on, Cap.  _Listen_ to me.  It’s Tony.  Tony Stark.”  He swallowed through an aching throat.  “Howard Stark’s son.”  Steve looked up slightly at that.  “You remember Howard.  He was your friend.  And you remember me.  I’m your friend, too, Steve.  I swear to you that we’re going to get you out of this, but you have to fight.”

“Steven,” Thor said.  “Hear us.  Come back to us.  Break his control over you.  Fight as you know you can.”

Sterns balked.  “Oh, please.”

Tony raised his hand impulsively and charged the repulsor in his palm to its fullest extent.  “Shut the hell up!” he snarled.  “Steve, don’t–”

But Steve was on his feet, standing protectively in front of Sterns.  It took nothing, the blink of an eye and lifting his right hand, for him to choke Thor.  The Asgardian hadn’t been prepared (or had even fathomed an attack like this) and his face tightened in pain.  Steve lifted him like he weighed nothing and threw him clear across the East River.  People screamed and fled.  Tony couldn’t hesitate.  He charged towards Sterns, desperate to pull him away from Steve, but he was hit in the chest with a blast of telekinetic energy.  He was flung backward roughly, slamming into the windshields of a couple of cars before tumbling between them to the road.  His HUD flashed warnings about the damage to his suit; the blast would have been sufficient to toss him hundreds of feet if the cars hadn’t stopped him.  He stood shakily, catching the eyes of the civilians who’d been dumb enough to stick around and watch.  “Get out of here!” he yelled.  _“_ Run!  _Get out!”_

He fired the jets in his boots.  He swerved to the right, barely avoiding a car tossed at him.  It crashed into the traffic behind him.  Car horns blared.  There was shrieking and panic and chaos.  Tony was nearly struck by the next car thrown toward him.  His leg was pinned as it hit the SUV in front of him instead and shoved it back.  “Damn it,” he hissed.  He ducked as another car barreled over his head.  “Damn it!  Steve, stop!  Stop!”

Steve stood where he had been, guarding Sterns.  Tony gave up trying not to fight and fired his palm repulsors at Steve.  The blue blasts struck nothing, of course, dissipating before they even came close to Rogers.  Tony growled in frustration.  He twisted to look behind him before planting his boot on the SUV’s rear bumper and giving it a massive push.  The next car hurtling at him he caught himself and tossed to the side.  “ _Steve!_ ”

“Give it a rest, Stark,” Sterns said.  “No one’s listening to you.  Why don’t _you_ just surrender?”  He narrowed his eyes, and Tony felt something rifle through his thoughts.  Something disgusting and slick and definitely _not him_.  Sterns’ face split in a hideous smile.  “Nice ulterior motive.  Steve, Stark’s lady friend is here.  She certainly has a propensity for getting herself into trouble, doesn’t she?  Find her.  Kill her.”

Tony’s heart stopped.  “No!  _No!_ ”  He prayed for Steve to falter now, for that small sign of _Steve_ himself to emerge from the monster, but he didn’t.  Steve took a step forward and suddenly car after car was being tossed off the highway, tossed into the median and down into the river, pushed aside as Steve looked for Pepper.  He walked down the center of the road, Sterns following him.  Metal screeched and people screamed.  The road cracked under Steve’s bare feet.  Tony abandoned all hope of holding back this fight and charged at Rogers, fists swinging and weapons firing.  Steve blocked them all without even so much as a glance at his direction, deflecting missiles and repulsor blasts.  Cars exploded around them.

Lightning cracked, and Thor struck the asphalt right in front of Steve.  He swung Mjölnir at him.  Steve’s wrathful expression didn’t change in the slightest as he was smacked to the side.  The blow should have killed a normal man, but it hadn’t because Thor hadn’t hit him all that hard.  Thor was trying not to hurt him.  _Don’t think we can afford that now!_ Steve moved fast; despite all of the damage done to his body and mind, he was still a super soldier and the best martial artist in the world.  He landed a series of fast, hard punches at Thor’s chest and finally a kick into Thor’s midriff, sending him tumbling back.  Tony staggered forward, throwing a few blows into the melee himself, but Steve tossed him back with a forceful blast of air.  It was like being yanked off his feet from behind, and he careened through the air before landing in the East River.

Tony emerged a second later.  “JARVIS, where’s Pepper?  Find her!”  He shot up from the water to find Steve and Thor heavily engaged.  They were fighting faster than he could really see.  “And where the hell are Banner and the others?”

“Miss Potts’ cellphone was likely damaged.  I cannot locate her in this mayhem.”  _God damn it!_   “The rest of the Avengers are still at Stark Tower.”

“Tell them to put some gas on it!  We need to pull this fight somewhere without so many people around!”

“Yes, sir.  SHIELD is en route, as well as the National Guard.”

 _Hell of a lot of good that’s going to do!_   He had to find Pepper and get her out of there.  He rocketed toward the 34th Street entrance to the tunnel, searching for calm and logical thought amidst his panic and remembering she’d been on her way toward the tunnel when the attack had started.  Water had flooded up onto the road.  He looked around desperately, searching the throng of people trying to escape.  He could hardly believe his luck when he spotted a drenched but familiar head of strawberry blond hair.  “Potts!”

She whirled around as he approached.  Aside from a bruise on her temple, she seemed well (though JARVIS presented Tony with an immediate rundown of her vital signs to double check that conclusion).  She was with one of the company drivers and a few police officers, and the group of them was helping people run from the flooded Midtown Tunnel entrance.  Miraculously, at least on this side of the tunnel, there didn’t seem to be anyone dead or severely wounded.  “Oh, Tony!” she gasped.  She struggled out of the water and ran to him, wrapping her arms around his neck.  “Thank God!  What’s happening?”

Tony had no time to answer.  Thor’s red cape fluttered overhead as he was thrown clear over 34th Street and into the city, quite a few cars spiraling after him.  Pepper screamed in shock.  Tony grabbed her tightly.  “This is it.  I’ve had it.  When this is over, I’m going to marry you so I have the legal and God-given right to keep you locked up somewhere safe.”

He expected some sort of disgusted response about how much of a chauvinistic pig he was, but she breathlessly asked, “Where in the world is _safe_ with you?”

“I don’t know.  Nowhere, apparently.”

“Apparently.  But fine.  Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“That wasn’t – I wasn’t – _no_ , damn it, not like this!”

Pepper clung to him.  The ground was shaking, and the water was rising.  “Get us out of here,” she pleaded.

They never had a chance.  Tony was helpless as he was yanked off the street, Pepper screaming against him.  His HUD nearly shorted from the energy coursing over his suit, but he managed to realize they were hundreds of feet in the air a second later.  Pepper screamed, holding onto him by only her arms around his neck.  His body moved without conscious direction as he enclosed her in his embrace, curling himself completely around her and twisting so his back was to the ground.  He did this with no time to spare as they were both slammed into the road surface of FDR at a bone-crushing speed.

Iron Man was registering significant damage.  Frankly, Tony wasn’t feeling so hot either, with blood filling his mouth and ribs bruised and maybe broken.  The HUD was flickering as the computer tried to recover.  He managed to get a breath of air into his lungs.  “Are you okay?” he gasped to Pepper.

Her tear-streaked face lifted from his neck.  Then she shrieked as she was yanked away.  It was Steve.  He threw Pepper roughly aside.  She hit a car and slumped to the street, cradling her arm to her chest and sobbing with her eyes squeezed shut.  Tony rolled and tried to fire his weapons at Rogers, but the shots went wide.  Steve loomed over him.  His expression was violent, filled with rage and the desire to cause pain.  It was the same horrific, baleful scowl that he’d had in the Tower all those days ago when he had nearly strangled Tony.

“Oh, okay,” Sterns said.  “You want to kill Stark first.  I don’t really blame you.  Really, I don’t.  I know what a jerk he’s been to you.  Go right ahead.  Get a little payback.”  He was standing in the background, his arms folded across his chest as he watched Steve threaten Tony.  “Maybe if I’d had the right Avenger before instead of Bruce this would’ve gone differently.  Oh, well.  Doesn’t matter.  They’re all going to die.”

“No!” Pepper cried.  Her voice was pinched in horror.  “No, don’t!”

Steve planted his foot on Tony’s chest and pushed him down into the shattered asphalt with a lot more force than Captain America could normally muster.  Red lights flooded the HUD, warnings of structural damage and strain, and Tony felt like he was back in that forest with the Hulk squeezing the life out of him.  He flailed, mindlessly struggling, swinging his arm up and firing the repulsor with as much power as he had.  Steve snarled and lowered his palm over the blast and turned it _back_ on Tony.  With the discharge coursing over him, his suit utterly shut down.  Steve leaned back and with a smirk dismantled the armor again.  Piece after piece was ripped off of Tony’s body, exposing fragile skin and bones.  Terror left Tony unable to breathe.  In the blink of an eye, Iron Man was _gone_.

And in the blink of an eye, Steve was going to kill him.

Tony felt something squeezing his heart beneath his ribcage.  He screamed hoarsely, unable to think or feel anything but the pain.  It took him back there, back to a dark cave in Afghanistan with hands in his chest and shrapnel cutting its way inside him.  Steve leaned down, his eyes teeming with malice and hurt and _hatred_.  “Steve, please…” Tony moaned in a pathetic whisper.   “Please…”

“Everything special about me came out of bottle, huh?” Steve harshly said.  The pain got _worse_ , like a vise cranking tighter and tighter until his heart could barely manage a beat.  Until the pressure made it slow, fail, arrest.

 _“Steve…”_ Tony begged.

“Stop!”  Pepper’s rough cry sliced through the tense moment.  She was up on her feet, and she slapped Steve hard enough to crack his face to the side.  Tony gasped, drawing in a glorious breath when the pressure was abruptly gone from his chest.  He coughed, turning weakly to his side and scrambling away.  Steve fell on his rear, completely taken aback.  Pepper stood over him, tears spilling from her eyes, but her stern face was locked into an expression of betrayal.  Steve whimpered an apology and tried to move away.  Her scowl shattered and she collapsed in front of his shivering body.  Her broken wrist was tight to her chest, but her other hand she put on his shoulder.  She held his gaze, _held him_ , boldly and without fear.  “This isn’t you,” she said firmly, sliding her hand to his cheek.  “This isn’t you, Steve.  This isn’t you!”

“Pepper?” he whispered.  He blinked and he was _back_.  He reached up his hand and grabbed hers.  “Pepper.”  There was a great deal of relief – _Steve knows her and he knows me and maybe we can get him back and finally stop this nightmare_ – and Pepper pulled him tight against her.

“No!”  At Sterns’ irritated shout, Tony struggled to move closer.  Sterns was now full of anger.  He stared at Steve with eyes that spoke of how fervently he was trying to get back into Steve’s mind.  “Nope.  No, no.  You finish what you started.  You listen to me.”

Steve wailed in misery and grabbed his head.  “Stop it!  _Stop it!_ ” Pepper cried frantically.  She tucked Steve against her even though his body was rigid with pain.  He fell to his side, nearly convulsing.  “You’re killing him!”

“Get back!  Get the hell away from him!” Tony ordered Sterns.  He had no suit, and his chest still throbbed with the damage done to it, but he bravely planted himself in front of Steve to protect him as if his body could thwart Sterns’ psychic attack.  “Let him go, Sterns!” 

 “You think killing me is going to fix this?  It’s not so easy,” Sterns taunted, though his tone was tense and his eyes glimmered with doubt.  “My thoughts are his thoughts. And the floodgates are open now.  There’s a hell of a lot of darkness in there, aching to get out.  You can’t just turn that off.”

“Just shut the hell up!” Tony railed, and he was across the few steps between them with surprising alacrity given how hurt he was.  He tackled the bastard, knocking him across the face with his fist as they went down.  Tony straddled him, socking him in the face repeatedly.  He finally and completely lost his temper, and he didn’t feel an ounce of regret or sympathy as he beat the shit out of him.  He grabbed Sterns by his shirt and wrenched him off the ground and raised his fist to strike.  “Get out of his head!”

Sterns screamed in horror.  “Steve!  _Steve, help me!_ ”

Steve shoved Pepper off and was back on his feet.  He grabbed Tony by the scruff of his neck and yanked him off of Sterns.  Tony yowled in pain and panic.  Again the only thought that was pounding through his head was that this was it.  This was how he was going to die.

But he didn’t.  Steve jerked forward and dropped Tony to the asphalt.  Thor was back and on him, driving him back down to the street with him arms wrapped tightly around his chest from behind.  Tony was aware enough to crawl away to Pepper’s side and watch wide-eyed as Steve struggled against Thor, howling in frustration as the steadfast Asgardian held on to him.  It was only a second that Thor managed to restrain him before Steve snarled and flung him off and into a car.  Still, a second was all it took.

There was the sound of something quickly cutting through the air.  Steve staggered forward in surprise before reaching behind him and yanking the arrow out of his shoulder.  Orange liquid dripped from the tip.  He turned, his chest heaving and his eyes wide.  Tony hauled Pepper close to him, not knowing _what_ was going to happen now.  Steve’s fingers unfurled and the arrow clattered to the street.

People were coming, and they were coming quickly.  Natasha, her guns pointed at Sterns as she stood behind them.  Clint, his bow drawn and another arrow filled with Extremis fitted to it.  Bruce, skidding to a stop next to Tony with wide and tense but hopeful eyes.  There were quinjets in the air and Harrier fighters filling the sky and the long, dark shadow of the SHIELD helicarrier approaching over the East River.  Cops flooded the street, guns drawn and shouting.  With a wince, Thor climbed out of the remains of the crushed car to guard his human companions.  He watched Steve warily.  _Everyone_ was watching Steve warily.

Except Sterns.  He was focused, glaring at Steve intently.  That disgusting mass on the side of his head pulsed with power.  His broken nose was gushing and one eye was completely beaten shut.  Sweat bathed his face, and his skin was a sickly hue of pea green that appeared even unhealthier with the grimace slowly taking control of his features.  He was trying to control Steve.  He was trying, and he couldn’t.  “Whoa.  Whoa, kid.  Come on.  Relax.”

Steve didn’t relax.  He took a step toward Sterns.  And another step.  And another.  Sterns backed up, his scowl deepening with determination.  “I’m your friend, remember?  I’m helping you with the pain.  Helping you get your revenge.  Stop.”  Steve didn’t stop.  “Stop!  You will listen to me!”  Sterns reached forward to grab Steve, to touch him and reinforce his grasp on the other man’s mind.  Steve stared him and pushed him away without contact.  Sterns was one step from total panic.  “Do you hear me?  I am the Leader, and you will follow–”

Sterns _vanished_.  One second he’d been there, frenzied and ugly and shouting, and the next he was simply gone in a show of expanding, exploding particles.  He disintegrated before their very eyes, blown into nothingness, into a small cloud of greenish vapor that dissipated in an instant.  Steve had torn him apart, molecule by molecule, and he was dead.

For what felt like an eternity, Steve was still.  Then he turned.  There were flames roaming under his skin, molten and glowing red, and his eyes focused on his team for a moment.  His eyes.  He was _there_ again.  But so was the rage.  So was the agony.  So much rage and so much agony.  _Fire._   It was burning away everything.  It was consuming him.  In a moment, there truly would be nothing left. 

“Steve,” Tony whispered.  He stood, pulling Pepper up with him, and backed into the Avengers.  _What have we done?  For the love of God, let this be right…_ “Steve–”

“Tony.”  Steve’s face broke in overwhelming desperation.  “Please, Tony…  Bruce.  Clint.”  His eyes were bright and filled with tears as he reached for them.  “ _Please_ … Please somebody help me.”

Then the man was lost, completely _lost_ in the inferno blazing inside.  He raised his arms, and Tony swore the world was coming to an end all around him.


	18. Chapter 18

Clint’s shot struck true.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.  He knew it even before Steve turned to them and begged for their help.  He knew it even before Bruce numbly shook his head beside him and said something about needing more, about Clint firing again.  He drew back on his bow and prepared to release the second arrow, but Steve was already moving, already shaking the ground.  His feet rose inches and then more from the surface as he raised his arms and the air veritably crackled around him with power.  Static electricity strong enough to form tiny, white bolts launched from molecule to molecule as air was shifted and twisted and rubbed together.  Clint faltered, fighting to steady himself and concentrate above the roar of the road breaking beneath them and the thunder of his own heart.  He loosed the arrow, but Steve snatched it from the air before it could hit him.  He snapped the shaft in two and turned to him, fire burning and burning, and Clint reeled back in terror.  Beside him Natasha unloaded her guns, but none of the bullets struck Steve.  He bent them off course, leading them to hit cars, the street, and the river behind them.  “You need to shoot him again!” Bruce shouted to Clint over the cacophony of things shattering, breaking, and disintegrating.  Pepper screamed and clung to Tony as he tried to get her behind him.  “You need to shoot him again!” 

Steve stared at Clint menacingly.  There was no sign of the man he respected, the friend as close to him as his own brother.  There was nothing left.  “Steve!” Clint called, staring intently and desperately at the fiery, angry visage in front of him.  Clint had long since abandoned the notion of God; it wasn’t reconcilable with the life he led and the things he’d seen and done.  But he was praying now.  Unabashedly, he was praying.  It was constant stream in the back of his head.  He was praying that Bruce’s crazy plan could actually work.  He was praying that this ended in some way other than a hellish disaster.  He was praying that this somehow ended without the Avengers killing Captain America.

And if they had to, if there was truly no other choice, he prayed that they could.

“Steve, listen to me.”  There was no recognition in Steve’s eyes.  Nothing.  Steve had been there seconds before, pleading for help, and now he was completely gone, devoured by the chemicals pumping through his veins and the blaze pulsing inside him.  “Steve, please…  Please!  Please listen to me!  Stop!”  They had all tried this, and it hadn’t worked.  It wouldn’t work because there was _nothing_ left.  Steve narrowed eyes that were brighter and more painful to look at than the sun and threw energy at them.  Clint yelped as it knocked him off his feet.  He heard Pepper scream again and Tony cry out and Natasha fighting to guard them as if guns and acrobatics could do anything at this point. 

Nothing could do _anything_.  _God, how do we stop this?  What do we do?_ Clint drew another arrow, ducking as a car was thrown toward him.  Thor staggered to stand in front of his human friends, swinging Mjölnir upward forcefully and striking the careening vehicle.  The smashed lump of metal and glass flew back toward Steve, and the soldier promptly disintegrated it just as he’d disintegrated Sterns moments before.  Thor whirled, his face bruised and bloodied.  “Get clear,” he ordered to Clint, and he launched himself at Steve.  “Banner!  Aid me now!”

Bruce hadn’t moved yet.  They’d only had enough time to equip five of Clint’s arrows with Extremis.  Only five.  And two were already gone and the situation was _worse,_ not better.  Another burst of telekinetic energy struck the road in front of them, digging a fissure wider than a car length in the highway.  Clint rolled to the side and pulled himself to his feet, dragging Bruce with him out of harm’s way.  That was ridiculous.  There was nowhere in the city that was out of harm’s way now.  “Clint, shoot him again!” Tony shouted.  Clint hopped up onto a car, looking back through the sweat and dust and fire.  There wasn’t a clear shot.  Thor had thrown himself at Steve again.  Mjölnir whizzed through the air, striking with all of Thor’s might, but Steve blocked it against his forearm.  It hardly hurt him and didn’t faze him.  The impact from the strike alone was enough to knock the Avengers back, a shockwave of blue and white light concentrically radiating from the fight, and the road shuddered weakly.  Steve slammed his open palm into Thor’s solar plexus, and the God of Thunder was driven straight through the feet of concrete forming the elevated highway and down into the city behind him.  Steve’s lips curled in a sick smile as he yanked Thor dozens of yards back to him a second after.  Mjölnir slid from Thor’s limp fingers and thudded against the pavement as Steve tossed him about like a rag doll and battered him like he was nothing.  One of Steve’s hits was powerful enough to make Thor scream in pain.

Thor was screaming in pain.

This was bad.  This was very bad.

“Clint,” Bruce said, snatching his arm.  There was green in his skin tone and gold in his eyes.  However, he was frantically trying to hang onto himself.  Natasha yelped as she scrambled away, avoiding another blast of telekinetic power and grabbing Tony and Pepper and running down the FDR Drive.  “Clint, you’ve got to hit him in the heart.  He’s metabolizing it before it can circulate!”

“It’s too late!”  A million frenzied, horrific thoughts rushed through Clint’s mind.  Steve, murdering his friends.  Steve, laying the Avengers to waste like it was _nothing._ Steve, slaughtering innocents without a care or concern or even the slightest bit of regret.  Steve, razing New York City to the ground.  Steve, destroying the world, unstoppable and violent and cruel.  Steve, turned into _everything_ Steve wasn’t.  The pain ripping through Clint’s soul was absolutely crushing.  There was terror and anger and grief, so much grief, for having failed his friend.  Steve had asked him to stop this very nightmare from unfolding, and he’d _failed._ They hadn’t stopped it at all.  They’d done the opposite.  They’d made it worse.  Extremis was poison, just like Lahey’s drug.  They’d poured more fuel on the goddamn fire, and now they had an inferno that couldn’t be controlled, couldn’t be contained.  If there’d been an opportunity to end this before, they’d lost it.  They’d thrown it away because they’d foolishly listened to their hearts instead of their heads.  _They’d made it worse._

Steve was dead.  They’d killed him and left behind a monster.

“Bruce,” Clint gasped.  “Please.  You have to stop him!”

“I will.”  Despite the obviousness of how intractable the situation had become, Bruce was calm, eerily so.  Out of all of them, _Bruce_ was the one who was completely serene.  He set his jaw, his face a picture of confidence as he squeezed Clint’s arm.  There was that anger, that low-level simmer that Clint had learned to recognize these last weeks, but more than that there was _certainty_.  “I will,” he said again, loudly and firmly.  “This is going to work!”  Clint wanted to argue, to proclaim that it was too damn late for that, but he didn’t.  Bruce was insistent, even as the world tipped and burned and dissolved around them.  The iron around Clint’s bicep was tight and painful.  “But you _need_ to shoot him in the heart.  Do you understand me?  In the heart!”

It was impossible.  Utterly and completely.  His aim was good enough to make his target, he knew, and he might have had a chance before when Steve had only been mostly unstoppable.  Now, now when Steve was moving faster than Clint thought possible and there seemed to be some sort of invisible, amorphous force field constantly shifting around him and guarding him…  _It was impossible!_

Thor howled again, and the Asgardian tumbled past them.  Natasha cried his name.  Bruce turned, muscles stretching and growing and his blue shirt ripping apart.  The Hulk grew out of Banner right in front of Clint’s wide eyes, and when the next wave of telekinetic energy blasted toward them, the Hulk took the brunt of it.  It tore at his flesh, ripping at it molecule by molecule.  Clint winced, hiding behind the huge mass of green muscles, nearly dropping his bow as his bones rattled uncomfortably inside him and jolted his aching nerves.  The Hulk roared loud enough that the buildings behind them shook, windows breaking and mortar and masonry crumbling.  The beast charged.

The road came apart under their feet.

Everything seemed to fall in slow motion.  Clint lost his balance, his boots sliding out from under him, and slammed down on his side hard.  His hip wracked with pain, and he fumbled for something to grab.  Ahead he saw the Hulk ram Steve, and the two tumbled into the East River with a huge splash.  The pavement and the supports beneath it and the land around it destabilized and spilled into the water.  Clint scrambled for purchase as the road tipped, but it was almost as if Steve had sucked away the energy holding the very particles together and everything came apart under his boots.  Panic coiled tightly in his belly as he tumbled into the swirling, sucking waters of the river below.

Something suddenly snatched his arm and pulled hard, nearly yanking it out of the socket of his shoulder.  He looked up.  “Hold on, Barton!” Thor demanded.  The Asgardian was struggling, but he managed to lift Clint off the rapidly sinking section of road.  The toes of Clint’s boots jabbed into concrete and asphalt as the two of them climbed as fast as possible.  The entirety of the ground lurched further and further beneath them, and at the last second they jumped, Thor yanking Clint along with him.  He reached up his right hand and Mjölnir rocketed toward it.  It carried them from the sinking highway and to the steady ground of 36th Street.

Clint turned after Thor set him down, swallowing through an aching, dry throat as he watched the huge section of the highway simply fall apart in a haze of smoke and dirt and dust.  He glanced around frantically.  People were screaming, fleeing the disaster in droves.  “Nat!” he demanded, holding his hand to his ear communicator.  He looked for Natasha’s distinctive red hair in the crowd, but there was no sign of her.  Fear left him floundering.  What if they hadn’t gotten away in time?  “Natasha!  Are you okay?  Answer me!”

Her breathless response came a second later.  “We’re okay!  I have Stark and Potts!”

“Where are you?”  The pandemonium around them was staggering.  There was some sort of explosion back near the river and the booming sound of water launching into the sky.  A breath later they were all drenched by a pummeling, punishing spray.  The crowd cried out, frantic civilians knocked down as they scrambled away down the street.  Clint regained his footing, grateful for Thor’s steadying hold behind him, and wiped the water streaming down his face.  He could hear the Hulk roaring.  He could hear a horrific fight continuing.  “Natasha!”

“Right here!” came a voice to his right.  Natasha struggled closer, her hair plastered to her face.  She had a nasty bruise along her left temple, but she seemed otherwise okay.  Stark, on the other hand, was gasping, his arm around his chest.  His face was white.  Potts clung to his other arm, worry splayed all over her pale face.  Her wrist was obviously broken. 

“We’ve got to get these people out of here,” Clint breathlessly ordered.

Natasha nodded and steadied herself, pressing her hand to her ear communicator as she spoke with Fury.  Clint heard her asking for reinforcements and evacuation.  At least perhaps they could lessen the death toll.  The sour thought pricked Clint’s anger, and suddenly it was all he could do to stand still.

“Banner’s plan has failed,” Thor said grimly, “and I do not believe I can best Steven without seriously injuring us both.”  He didn’t seem able to catch his breath.  Clint had never imagined he would see the Asgardian prince so shaken and helpless.  Thor noticed his dismay and stood a little taller, his fingers clenching the pommel of his hammer tightly.  “I will if I must.” 

“Bruce said we need to inject Steve a second time!” Clint shouted over the din.

“No!  No, it is too dangerous.”  The demigod wrapped his arm around his chest, grimacing as though it had hurt to shout.  “I cannot protect you and fight him at once.  I cannot!  Steven is far too powerful now.”

By now the National Guard was flooding the street.  Humvees and SUVs rolled up, some adorned with the SHIELD logo.  Clint could hear a flurry of commands over the communications link.   Soldiers armed with rifles and walkie-talkies began to aid the civilians still struggling to escape.  Barricades were going up quickly, and there was talk of perimeters and medical triage areas and evacuation through the bridges and tunnels on the Hudson River.  There were choppers in the air, fighter jets and quinjets surrounding the fight as the military attempted to contain the situation and keep innocents away.  The SHIELD helicarrier blocked the afternoon sunlight and casted a long, deep shadow over the East River.  And there were strict orders coming down from SHIELD, from Fury himself, that absolutely no one was to engage the enemy.  _The enemy._   “Thor, listen–”

“Steve’s still in there,” Pepper gasped.  She looked devastated, but her eyes were bright and clear.  “Steve’s alive.  He was asking us for help.  Someone has to get through to him.  Someone has to.”

Tony coughed, leaning more and more on the two women flanking him.  “Don’t think anyone can now,” he grunted.  He didn’t look quite with it.  His eyes were glazed with a possible concussion, and the way he didn’t seem capable of standing straight heralded some internal damage.  His close call with Steve had shaken him as badly as it had everyone else. “There is no Steve, only Zuul.”  Pepper glared at him for the inappropriate remark.  “What?  At least the Ghostbusters got to fight the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  I’ll take fluffy sugar over this shit any day of the week.”

Thor didn’t get the joke but didn’t bother to ask.  He looked sadly upon the beaten and wearied humans.  “Steven is beyond reason,” he declared.  He appeared to gather himself.  “Get our friends to safety.  I will go aid Banner.  Steven cannot stand against us both.  Together we can bring him down.”

It was fairly obvious the rest of the team was effectively barred from this fight.  An army of bizarre aliens had been something they could face together, though the more human of them had languished faster (Clint had experienced firsthand many times how difficult it was to keep up with a super soldier, and he knew Thor and the Hulk were normally much stronger, faster, and resilient than even Steve was).  But this was flat-out beyond Natasha and him, and Tony without his suit was perhaps even more helpless.  They were out of their leagues, and they knew it.

That didn’t mean Clint had to accept it.  “Thor, I’m coming with you.  Bruce said another dose of Extremis–”

“You must stay here!” Thor snapped irately, his temper frayed by the monumentally difficult and dangerous battle before him.  It was hard enough to accept what needed to be done, and the argument and debate was making it even more strenuous.  He was turning to head back to the battle raging just beyond the edge of the street. 

“Steve is my friend!” Clint firmly declared.  “I’m not staying here!  Bruce said hit him again, damn it, and that’s what I’m doing!”  He decided then and there that he wasn’t going to give up.  He wasn’t going to.  If Bruce thought there was a chance, then there was one, no matter how small and fleeting.  Maybe it was foolish and downright stupid to be clinging to the hope that Bruce’s idea would work, but he had nothing else.  And he owed it to Steve to keep fighting.  Steve had stood with him, walked with him, through some of his darkest hours.  He would do no less.  Steve deserved no less.  Steve _needed_ him.  He had three more arrows filled with Extremis.  Three shots.  He would make sure one of them hit where it needed to.  He was the world’s best sniper.  He’d make his mark.

Thor regarded him evenly for a moment, still struggling to catch his breath.  “If we don’t stop this, we’re all dead anyway,” Clint added, and he knew beyond any doubt it was true.

“Probably,” Tony said, wincing.  He looked somewhat recovered.  At least he was standing straighter.  “Besides, the more we keep Captain Crazy busy, the less damage he can do to other people.  Go do your thing.  I’ll be right behind you.”

Thor looked grimly resigned, but he nodded.  “Hold tightly to me,” he said, grabbing Clint and hauling him into his embrace.  Clint wrapped his hands around Thor’s armor as Mjölnir spun beside him, whizzing through the air faster and faster, until they were flying.  He was normally not bothered by heights, but this was nauseating and he almost clenched his eyes shut against the disorientation and nausea building in his throat.  A breath later Thor thudded to the remains of the stretch of the FDR, and Clint felt the road beneath his feet and braved looking.

The Hulk was pushed out of the river.  He flew through the air above them.  The beast bellowed his displeasure, smashing into a building and tearing away a hefty chunk of the side of it.  A woman shrieked as her apartment was ruptured and she was left dangling from the side, but before her grip gave way, the Hulk was there again, snatching her from the air.  He climbed the building like a spider, picking up imperiled civilians and catapulting back down to the ground and setting them to safety.  Clint watched in relief, hardly noticing as Thor left his side and ran toward the river.

Steve was there.  He parted the waters and walked slowly back up onto the ground.  Clint resisted the urge to look away, to _run_ away.  Every step of Steve’s bare feet to the earth resulted in things levitating all around him.  Large things like rocks and mangled chunks of debris.  Small things like dirt and dust and beads of water.  It was like something out of a science fiction movie.  The air felt heavy, laden with energy and power as much as it was with dust and moisture and heat.  It would be pretty damn amazing if it weren’t for the fact it was his best friend who was causing it.  His best friend who had absolutely no expression on his face now, a blank emptiness that was about as chilling as the scowl full of malignant wrath that he’d previously had.  Clint couldn’t tell what he was thinking or seeing or feeling or if he was thinking and seeing and feeling at all.  It was terrifying.  Thor seemed alarmed as well, regarding Steve warily and worriedly.

The minute Steve emerged from the river, the squadron of Harrier jets in the sky was there, encircling him from above.  Clint glanced upward, realizing some of them belonged to SHIELD, but others were Air Force.  Weapons were readied, missiles aimed and prepared for launch.  Clint pressed his ear communicator again.  “Fury!  We need these jets to stand down!  Repeat: disengage!”

“Put your hands on your head and surrender!” a loud voice ordered from the military helicopter approaching from the city.  It was flanked by more threatening aircraft.  Steve continued slowly walking from the river.  “Surrender immediately or we will fire!”

“No!  Stand down!” Clint shouted.  Steve narrowed his eyes at the choppers and they abruptly powered down.  Just like that, their rotors stopped and they crashed to the ground.  “Steve, no!  No!”  Clint spared a glance behind him to see the pilots staggering from their wrecked aircraft.  Thankfully they hadn’t been high in the air and they’d landed in a relatively abandoned area.  But they wouldn’t keep catching lucky breaks like this.  Anything that provoked aggression from Steve was bad, extremely so, and they couldn’t afford it.  Thankfully the fight was for the moment fairly well limited to an evacuated area, and Steve was focused on the Avengers.  The last thing they needed was more people in danger.  Clint had thought more distractions would make this easier, give Steve too much to face, but Steve was facing all of it handily.  They couldn’t do this if they had to continually be rescuing and protecting others.  “Tell everyone to back the hell off!”

“Hawkeye, can you handle this?” came Fury’s question.  It was tight with worry, with fear that this was already beyond repair.  They hadn’t told Fury their plan to inject Steve with Extremis.  There hadn’t been time, and it would have definitely been met with denial.

“We have it,” Clint responded.  He wasn’t sure if he was lying.  He probably was, but he hoped not.

It was enough for Fury.  There was a flurry of desperate orders over the communications link, most of which consisting of the SHIELD Director shouting irately and verging on panic.  Clint couldn’t waste the seconds to listen or even make certain the orders were followed.  The thunder of the Hulk’s feet shook the ground, and beside Clint Thor made to charge.  He watched, wide-eyed with disbelief, as both the Hulk and Thor tried to bring down Captain America.  “Wait, wait!” he gasped, whipping an arrow from his quiver.  He took a few steps to the side to better his position.  “I don’t have a shot!”

“Clint, where are you?” Natasha called.

Clint scrambled up the FDR, climbing onto a car hood and then jumping up to the side of an overturned and empty bus.  “Hang on!”  He fitted the arrow, tracing the impossibly quick fight going on before his eyes.  “Jesus, he’s fast.”  And it was disturbing because it was _Steve_ fighting.  Clint had spent many missions at Steve’s side, watching him levy his considerable strength, speed, agility, and expertise at countless assailants.  He’d worked out with Steve, trained with him, sparred with him.  He knew that fighting style.  Now the punches and kicks and blocks and counters were powered by rage, by forces beyond comprehension let alone control.  The grace was still there, the effortless mastery, but it was twisted by what Clint could only describe as evil.

A missile came flying toward them.  “Shit!” Clint hissed.  They had to get this situation under control!  Steve turned, holding down Thor, and deflected the explosive into the Hulk.  He’d obviously enhanced its power, because Clint had seen the Hulk take hits like this before and shrug them off like nothing.  The beast raged as he was thrown toward the remains of 34th Street.  Clint saw a chance and didn’t hesitate.  He loosed the shot at Steve’s exposed back, right between his shoulder blades.

Steve turned again, his eyes flashing in anger, and Clint’s shot spun wildly to the right.  “Damn it!” he snarled, drawing another arrow.  More missiles zoomed through the air at Steve.  He blocked them all, sending some to the side and some back into the sky.  The impact of the shots against the ground around them was devastating.  Overhead the aircraft floundered, struggling to evade their own weapons.  One jet collided with another, though whether by accident or because Steve had made them, Clint couldn’t tell.  Parachutes deployed as the pilots escaped.  It occurred to Clint that Steve could have turned the gunfire and missiles on the hapless men as they floated down to the river below, but he didn’t.  It was occurring to him that Steve could have killed them all with a thought, just like he had Sterns, but he _wasn’t_.  _He’s alive under it all.  He has to be._

 _Or he’s a lot angrier at us than he is at everyone else.  And he wants us to hurt._ That was chillingly upsetting.  “Get these jets off of us!”

“It’s chaos up there!” Natasha responded. 

As Clint ducked for cover, he saw her on 36th Street.  Stark was still with her.  Clint watched in stupefaction and no small amount of relief as yet another Iron Man suit zoomed down from Stark Tower in the distance and enveloped Tony’s body.  “God, how many of those you got?”

“Surprisingly fewer than I had,” Tony answered.  His voice was tense with pain.  Iron Man rocketed back to Clint’s side and thudded onto the remains of the street beside him.  “This is not good.”

“No shit.”

“How many shots you have left?”

Clint gritted his teeth.  “Two.”

“Better make them count.”  Then Tony launched into the fray like Steve hadn’t almost killed him a few minutes ago, like Steve wasn’t capable of completely dismantling his suit with a thought and leaving him exposed.  He launched a barrage of smaller missiles and repulsor blasts at Steve, which Steve had to turn to stop.  The Hulk didn’t hold back this time, pounding across the way and engaging.  Steve ducked and rammed him with both of him hands, sending him down into the remains of the highway.  Concrete shattered in a spray as the huge Avenger tumbled and rutted the road.  Tony let loose another slew of missiles at Steve, trying to provide Clint a chance to fire the arrow he held taut to his bow.  Steve snarled as he turned again, raising his hands and deflecting all of it.  Steve slammed Tony into the water at incredible speeds, wrenching him from the sky like nothing.  Then Steve turned back to the Hulk.  There was rage in his eyes.  Rage directed at Bruce, and a great deal of it.

There was a blur of red and black.  Clint’s heart leapt into his throat in panic.  “Natasha, no!”  But Natasha didn’t stop.  She slid beneath Thor as he was knocked back, sprung up from her hands to her feet, and threw herself onto Steve.  She’d picked something up.  Clint’s beleaguered mind realized belatedly it was a broken arrow, the one he’d fired at Steve before.  Surprisingly she brought Steve down for a moment, her legs wrapped around his chest.  And she drove the arrow into his shoulder.  Steve howled and threw her off.  She slammed into an upturned section of road and slumped into the mud.  She didn’t move.

Iron Man was out of the river again, and he landed with a clank at Natasha’s side.  Clint staggered over to her.  She was still breathing but out cold.  Christ, they were no match for this.  His own rage blossomed over him.  “Steve, goddamn it, stop it!”  Steve was breathing heavily.  Another wave of Extremis was battering him.  Still, Clint could see he was struggling against something else.  Struggling to hold onto his restraint maybe.  Struggling to convince himself that these people were his friends, not his enemies, and that they hadn’t hurt him.  There was guilt and shame and grief.  Clint stood, so damn _helpless_ , as Thor took the moment of weakness to his advantage and tossed Mjölnir at Steve.  The hammer cut through the air faster than Clint could see.  Steve whirled and brought up chunks of the road and dirt and _anything_ to block the strike.  Mjölnir punched through it all, hitting Steve in the side, and he howled in pain.  That should have killed him, but it hadn’t.  Not with both Extremis and the super soldier serum healing him.

Clint wondered if they could even kill Steve now.

Thor was reaching the same worrying conclusion, summoning his hammer back and sharing a tight look with Clint and Tony.  “Protect her and take cover,” he ordered, and he charged back in the fray.

“Like hell,” Tony said.

“Tony, get Nat some place safe.”

“We need to stop this now,” Tony snapped.  “Give an arrow to Banner.  Maybe he can–”

The Hulk came back with a snarl, driving his fist into Steve.  Steve’s brow furrowed with effort and anger as he snapped the Hulk’s arm down and drove an uppercut into the beast’s jaw.  The Hulk grabbed Steve by the chest, pinning his arms to his side, and slammed him down into the river.  “Christ,” Clint whispered.  “Is he even aware enough to–”

A wave of water rose out of the river and nearly drowned them.  Tony had Natasha in his arms and Clint by his vest as he propelled out of the flood.  Tony set them to a higher place, where the wreckage from one of the nearby buildings had spilled into the roadway.  Clint sputtered, coughing a lungful of water out of his chest.  Tony stood in front of them as another blast of energy buffeted over them, rough and harsh and miserable.  The world seemed to blur and shift nauseatingly.  When it finally abated, Clint half expected to be dead.  He looked again to find even more of the area was destroyed.  The ragged ends of the FDR Drive were even further away north and south, and in the middle was a huge, shallow crater where concrete and steel and wreckage had been reduced to dust.  Water was leaking in from the river.  And Steve and the Hulk were still fighting.  Thor was struggling back to his feet and rushing into the melee.  “Rogers is gonna kill all of us,” Tony said.

Clint had to believe.  He had to.  “No, he won’t.  Get Nat out of here.”  Tony hesitated a moment more before lifting Natasha’s limp form into his arms and flying away.  Clint drew as deep and steadying a breath as he could before jumping back down into the fray.

Steve was holding the Hulk back with one hand outstretched, keeping the snarling and raging monster feet away from him, as he grabbed Thor tight about the neck from yards away.  The force holding the Hulk immobile was so powerful it was literally ripping his skin apart, dissolving the dense flesh across his arms and thighs and chest.  Anyone else would have been dead.  The Hulk, however, pushed closer.  Steve lifted Thor dozens of feet off the ground and held him there for an endless second.  Clint nocked another arrow but he wasn’t fast enough.  His target was blocked again by Thor’s body falling.  Steve snapped the demigod to the ground and dragged the groaning body toward him.  In no time at all he had one muscular arm draped around Thor’s throat.  He sacrificed his hold on the Hulk to twist his fist Thor’s tangled hair.  He was going to break Thor’s neck.

The Hulk screamed and broke free.  He was across the distance in one mighty leap, tackling both of them.  Someone cried out pain; Clint wasn’t sure if it was Steve or Thor.  The scuffle sent water high into the air and mud and dirt flying.  Clint tried to trace the mess of tangled limbs and vicious blows with his eyes, but he couldn’t.  A second passed, and the Hulk had Steve pinned, a massive hand driving Steve’s head into the mud.  Steve bucked and screamed.  Thor threw himself over the writhing body.  “Hawkeye!” he cried in desperation.

“Shit,” Clint whispered, trying to aim.  There was so much struggling and so much random debris floating around them as Steve’s powers flailed out of control that he couldn’t get a clear shot.  Concrete cracked under his feet.  The sky seemed to groan.  The ground quaked and rose and then dropped.  There was a blur of pale flesh that Clint knew was Steve’s chest between the Hulk’s green skin and Thor’s hands and all the debris drifting around them.  He needed to focus now.  _Breathe._

He let the arrow go.  It shot fast and true and sunk into the left side of Steve’s chest, just as he’d aimed it.  But Clint knew right away it hadn’t gone deep enough to reach his heart.  Steve threw his head back and screamed again, hoarsely and filled with frustration.  His skin was burning.  Clint could see Thor recoil, and Steve took advantage of that one moment of weakness, throwing the demigod off of his lower body.  The Hulk was the next to go.  Steve grabbed him by the neck and flung him across the road and back into the city.  Steve’s own strength was so enhanced and mixed with his telekinetic powers that he was rapidly becoming unbeatable.

But the Hulk was getting angrier.

He was back in an instant, pounding and pounding as those huge feet pulverized the ground.  Clint barely had the opportunity to get out of the way as the green blur raced past him and slammed into Steve again.  Steve caught the blow at the last second, twisting and trying to dissipate the momentum, but he couldn’t.  The Hulk was too powerful now, made more and more so by his mounting frustration and fury.  Bruce was completely letting him go.  Clint didn’t know whether to be terrified or relieved.  The Hulk’s booming voice echoed through the city, and he smashed down on the staggering man beneath him.  Clint couldn’t breathe or move or tear his eyes away.  All he could think was that he was about to learn what happened when an unstoppable force met an immovable object.

Thor was beside him, protecting him with his own body, as the highway exploded all around them.  Debris pelted him, cutting through his black combat suit, and he winced and squeezed his eyes shut until the barrage was over.  “We are losing this,” Thor murmured.  Steve landed an impressive roundhouse kick into the Hulk’s chest, sending him sprawling, and he grabbed the arrow lodged in his ribs and yanked it free.  The blue faded from his eyes, replaced with the molten red of Extremis, and under his skin fire roiled like the waves of a sea ravaged by a storm.

Iron Man suddenly reappeared, hovering in front of Thor and Clint and letting loose a hefty, long repulsor blast.  It hit Steve in the chest and pushed him back.  Tony seemed downright shocked.  The field of debris twisting around Steve like a whirlwind collapsed.

The dose of Extremis was beginning to work.

And when the Hulk came at him again, Steve couldn’t stop him.  Giant slabs of concrete that had been huge sections of the highway were tossed through the air like nothing by the Hulk.  Steve went down on one knee, trying to hold them back.  They shattered as they collided with the force of air the soldier was using to protect himself, but that force wasn’t as strong as it had been.  “Bruce!” Clint yelled, stepping around Thor in panic.  If Steve was weakening and the Hulk was getting stronger…  Did the monster have access to Bruce’s thoughts?  Did he even know his plan was working?  “Bruce, stop!  Stop!”

The Hulk ignored him, consumed by his rage, railing on Steve with utter abandon.  He was causing as much damage to the highway and land surrounding it as Steve was at this point.  He ripped a huge piece of road from the remains of the highway.  Twisted rebars protruded from tons of concrete.  He tossed the massive chunk at Steve.

Steve didn’t block it.

Clint stumbled closer before Thor took his arm and roughly yanked him back.  Tony thudded to the unstable ground beside him.  The dust settled slowly, revealing a mound of crushed and broken concrete.  Steve was under it.  The Hulk stood to the side, watching the wreckage with a suspicious glare.  There was silence over the communications link as everyone waited.

The wreckage exploded outward.  Clint dove to the ground to protect himself, covering his head with his arms.  When the ungodly racket ceased, he looked up and saw Steve climbing to his feet.  There was a twisted rod of metal running straight through his midsection.  Clint’s heart leapt into his throat and he scrambled toward Steve, watching in wide-eyed disbelief as his friend grabbed the end of the bloodied metal and just pulled it out.  It came free with a spurt of blood, but a breath later Steve’s muscles and skin knitted itself over the wound like it had never been there at all.  Extremis was glowing brightly in his eyes and under his skin.  For a second, Clint actually wondered if that was it, if his arrow had gone sufficiently deep into Steve’s chest to deliver enough Extremis to end this.

It hadn’t.  “You did this to me,” Steve snarled, staring vengefully at the Hulk.  Tears burned in his eyes.  He was shaking in absolute madness.  The weight of everything he’d suffered, of everything that had happened between him and Banner, was pushing him down into the fire.  “You did this to me!”

The Hulk grunted, but his face softened ever so slightly.  “No.”

 _“You did this to me!”_   Steve raised his hands with a hoarse sob and blasted them all back in retaliation.  Tony cried out and Iron Man was violently knocked into the city again.  Thor staggered, the meat of the arm he held in front of his face burned and blistered, and Clint felt ridiculously uncomfortable in his own skin.  His heart wasn’t beating right and his lungs felt like they weren’t working together and a horde of ants was crawling along his bones.  However, the misery was fast, faltering as Steve’s powers faltered, and the Hulk was on him again.

So were the jets.  Steve’s strength dissipating was noticeable, and now they were eager to take advantage.  A flurry of frantic shouts and orders filled the communications link.  “Target is weakening.  Repeat: target is weakening.”

“Do we have permission to engage?  Sir?”

“Permission denied!” came Fury’s sharp response.  Above them, the helicarrier hovered.  Clint didn’t know who was calling the shots up there anymore.  The last time Fury and the Council had been at odds over what to do about a disaster in New York City, the Council had won.  Manhattan would have been destroyed if it hadn’t been for the Avengers.  Considering how quick the Council had been to nuke the city, he prayed Fury still had authority and that Fury still thought the situation was salvageable.  It was.  Steve was weakening, struggling to keep with the Hulk and losing ground.  If the Hulk could pin him again…  “Stay back!  I order you to hold your fire!”

Hill’s voice followed, relaying orders to the flight squadrons.  The Air Force fighters obviously had different directives, and despite her angry demands, they were not standing down.  The argument was loud and taut with tension and panic.  “Stand down!  The Avengers have the situation–”

“The Avengers are getting their asses kicked, sir,” somebody returned sharply.  Clint briefly wondered if anyone outside of SHIELD knew who they were fighting.  It certainly didn’t seem that way.  “I have orders to–”

Another wave of telekinetic energy slammed into everyone.  Clint staggered, watching as jets and choppers struggled to maintain altitude.  The Hulk had Steve pinned again, down in the pulverized dust and ash from the fight.  Clint couldn’t see him very well, but a pair of filthy, bloody hands was pushing up against the colossal green fist that was pushing down.  Thor sprinted over, seeking to aid the Hulk in restraining Steve with renewed hope that Clint could take the shot, but Clint was doubtful.  There was only one arrow left, so he needed to be sure, and he didn’t think his bow had the strength to drive it deep enough, not from any range at least, and that meant getting close enough to–

It didn’t matter.  Somebody got impatient, and the Harrier jets were firing again.  The Hulk roared as a missile detonated against his back, ripping around in fury.  That was enough to allow Steve to regain some advantage, and he threw the Hulk up into the jets.  The Hulk hit one, sending it spinning wildly and showering its neighbors with bullets.  Things happened rapidly.  Missiles were launched.  Planes collided.  Tony roughly cursed.  Iron Man was moving and moving fast, trying to save the pilots as a litany of accidents and poor luck resulted in collisions and weapons exploding on them rather than away from them.  Steve was back on his feet, even as Thor wrapped an arm around him from behind.  “Barton!” the demigod shouted.

But Clint couldn’t shoot.  He couldn’t do anything but watch as Steve reflected the array of missiles coming at him, sending them back toward the sky.  It happened so fast, a blur of fire and smoke, as some of them struck the jets.  Most of them were headed toward the helicarrier.  “No!  _Steve!_ ”  Clint’s cry came too late.  More than a dozen of the wayward shots struck one of the helicarrier’s engines.  The explosion was huge and loud, a ball of orange, red, and yellow blowing wide and high into the sunset.  The helicarrier had already been hindered by AIM’s attack earlier that day, and damaging another engine proved too much.

Clint didn’t need the flurry of terrified voices buzzing in his ear to know that the helicarrier was losing power and losing altitude.  The massive ship seemed to dangle in the low-lying wisps of clouds as if suspended by invisible threads.  One by one, those threads were cut.  Black, oily smoke billowed upward from the destroyed engine, and the carrier rolled to the right as its stability was hindered.  Its long, weighty shadow shifted over the city as it veered off course, tipping down and spilling the contents of its flight deck into the East River and down onto the FDR.  Iron Man was there, grabbing people as they tumbled and fell, diving in the air to catch those that plummeted by him.  Clint shook his head in mounting panic.  “Steve,” he called.  “Steve, stop this!  Stop it!”

Thor held Steve tighter and tighter, restraining him hard enough to break bones.  “Hawkeye!” he screamed again in utter frustration, _waiting_ for Clint to take the shot.

But Clint didn’t take it.  He couldn’t.  Not now.  The helicarrier was listing in the air, falling at a much more rapid rate.  It was twisting and turning and well over the city.  If it crashed, thousands of people would be killed.  “Steve!  Listen to me!  I know you can hear me!  _Stop it!_ ”

Steve struggled wildly against Thor’s hold.  It was more than obvious his strength was waning, but he wasn’t about to submit.  His body was failing him, so battered by the fight and the chaotic stress upon it.  That emboldened Clint to get closer, which he did, shouldering his bow and stumbling over the debris and through the water that had spilled onto the roadway.  Thor drove Steve down to his knees, holding his arms behind his back.  Steve’s face was wrathful, a maelstrom of anger and pain from _everything_ that had been done to him.  His eyes were alive with fire.  Thor grimaced when the contact with Steve’s skin burned him.  “Hawkeye, you must…”  He lost his strength to speak, concentrating on holding Steve helpless and steady.

This was the moment to end this.  At this range, he knew he and Thor could drive that arrow into Steve’s heart.  Stab it in, spread Extremis all through his body at an alarming rate, give the super soldier serum the power it needed, and finish this nightmare one way or another.  And doom the city to disaster.

Clint grabbed Steve’s face.  His skin burned, the heat scorching right through the tips of Clint’s fingers and seemingly searing his bones, but he didn’t let go.  He didn’t turn away.  He made Steve look at him.  Steve was so dark and damaged by anger that Clint’s heart ached at seeing how low and raw he was.  He kept himself soft and sincere.  “You know me.  You trust me.”

“No.”  The whisper was harsh and cruel.

Clint refused to be dissuaded.  “Yes, you do.  You know me.  Think.  Listen to your heart.  You know me and you know us and you know yourself.  You _know_.”  His mind went back, back to that horrid eternity in the SHIELD science lab when Steve had been fighting sleep and fighting nightmares.  The last time he’d really talked to Steve.  “You’re not alone.  I told you I’d walk with you to the end of the line.”  That had had such an effect on Steve before.  He hoped to God it still would.  “I will.  I swear on my life, I will.”

The fire faded from Steve’s gaze in a blink, and he went suddenly limp in Thor’s arms.  His eyes focused.  _Focused._   “Clint?”

Thor practically choked on his relief, but he didn’t for a moment let up on his crushing grip on Steve.  Clint kept himself calm, kept his face open and his voice level.  “Yeah, you got it.  It’s me.  Help us.  Please, Steve.  I need your help now.  We need your help.  People are gonna die.  You gotta stop that.  You have to save them.”

Steve struggled slightly, and Clint could see the anger simmering inside him.  It was still there, fueled by Lahey’s drug and Extremis and all of the trauma he’d endured over the past two weeks.  It was violent and hungry.  But it wasn’t stronger than him.  It wasn’t stronger than their friendship, than all the moments they’d stood by each other, than good-natured ribbing and jokes and quietly bearing each other’s burdens.  Bruce had been right from the beginning: Steve was still fighting.  Steve was still himself.  Steve was still Captain America.  “Thor, let him go,” Clint said firmly.

“Hawkeye, we should not–”

“Let him go.”  Thor stared doubtfully down at the two men for a moment, wondering and uncertain and trying to trust that they were not wasting away the hard-won opportunity to end of this.  There was no time.  The helicarrier was falling and distantly the Hulk screamed.  The monster was coming back, and when he arrived, Clint knew he would lose Steve again.  If the Hulk was beyond reason, this tenuous connection would be shattered by fury and the need for vengeance and brutality.

The helicarrier was barely a few hundred feet above Midtown at this point.  Tony’s tense voice cut over the communications link.  “I can’t do anything!  Does anyone copy?”  The stern of the ship was dropping faster where the crippled rotor was still spewing sable billows of smoke into the sky.  In a matter of seconds, it would hit the top of Stark Tower, but that would be only the first.  The helicarrier was massive, more than a thousand feet long.  It would crush and smash and rain down death and destruction.  The Hulk roared, and the ground shook, and Clint feared he was too late.

But the Hulk didn’t attack them.  He was a blur of green and black as he charged across the remains of the FDR and down 36th Street, bounding over wreckage and abandoned cars, leaping up into the buildings.  Windows were broken and facades were damaged as the Hulk pushed and jumped and threw himself to the top of Stark Tower.  And once he was there, he caught the helicarrier as it slammed down.  The Hulk’s scream echoed through the city, as loud as the loudest thunder, pulsing around the buildings.

“Let him go, Thor!” Clint shouted, and Thor did.

Steve was on his feet, and he threw both his hands out.  The helicarrier’s devastating descent was stopped.  Between Steve’s efforts and the Hulk’s, it leveled off.  Steve cried out, staggering, and there was the blood again, oozing from his nose and his ears as he tried to keep the massive aircraft from falling any further.  Clint felt something inside him throb in misery and guilt and anger for this, for using Steve like this when his powers were diminishing.  But there was no choice.  He hoped beyond anything that Steve was strong enough, that the poison in his head was still potent enough, to save the city.

For an endless eternity without thought or breath or motion, the helicarrier lingered there.  There was a distant rumble of it brushing against buildings and people screaming.  Again it was dangling, held up by only the strength of the Hulk and the power of Steve’s will.  “You can do this, Steve,” Clint said softly.  He moved closer, afraid of the fire raging in his friend’s body and mind but stronger than his doubt.  He abandoned his hesitation and set his hand to Steve’s shoulder and squeezed hard and firm.  “I’m with you.”

Steve’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a show of exertion, and then the helicarrier _moved_.  He drew it back from over Midtown, its long, frightening shadow sliding away from the crowded city streets.  Clint watched, unable to do anything other than breathe and hope and hold tight to Steve, as the huge aircraft was excruciatingly slowly dragged back over the city.  With a loud whine and shriek of metal straining, Steve rotated the listing vessel, tipping it so that it was upright again.  Clint could feel every part of Steve’s body tense, cords of muscles thick and taut, his breath shallow in his throat and tears and sweat rolling down his face.  Extremis burned over him, hotter and hotter, and Clint could barely stand the heat radiating from his body.  But he wasn’t going to leave.  Not now.  Not ever.  “I’m with you.”

Steve screamed with effort and brought the helicarrier faster and farther, retracting it back over the FDR Drive toward the East River.  It sank lower as he did, and panic rent the air.  It was low enough now that Clint could see the damage, the gaping wounds in the turbine and the scorched fissures from AIM’s bomb.  He could see the seams between the hull plating, the flames licking the deck, the structural instability shaking it down to its innards.  Steve was shaking, too.  His eyes were full of misery and pain.  It was coming hard and fast now.  He was spent.  He couldn’t do anymore.

The helicarrier wasn’t going to make it back into the river.

But that familiar howl echoed through the city again, and a breath later the Hulk was back.  He launched himself from the streets behind them to the side of the carrier, his massive arms latching onto its flight deck.  The concrete surface buckled and cracked under the weight and force, but it didn’t break, and the Hulk’s powerful pull moved the helicarrier even closer to the water.  Steve wavered but fought more, a _second_ more, and the helcarrier splashed down into the East River.  Water rushed up onto land.

Everything was still for a moment.  There were things burning, smoke and air filled with ash and dust, and Clint couldn’t catch his breath.  “Let me go,” Steve said softly.  It was him, emerging from the insanity.  From the war inside his mind and body and soul.  He was crying.  He looked so weak, so frail.  So tired.  “Please just let me go.”

Clint refused, tightening his grasp on Steve’s shoulder and tentatively grabbing his arm.  “I said let me go!”  He wrenched away from Clint’s grasp.  Extremis crawled over him like liquid fire, and he was fighting to get away.  He knocked Clint back without even touching him, and Clint staggered and landed hard on his side.  It wasn’t a strike meant to hurt.

Tony was there, pulling Iron Man’s helmet off so Steve could see who it was.  “Whoa, whoa!  Easy, Steve!”  He immediately reached for the captain, seeking to restrain him, but Steve shoved him aside as well. 

“I can’t.  I can’t!”  His rough words were loud and plaintive.  “Get away from me!  _Get away!_ ”  He batted Thor to the side like he was nothing, and after that he was stumbling toward the river.  The rage and insanity were coming back quick and hard.  He was trying to escape that.  He was trying to escape them.

He was trying to get away before he hurt anyone else.

Water splashed them, and the Hulk jumped from the river.  With a mighty cry he landed in front of Steve, barring his exit.  His massive hand latched around Steve’s throat, squeezing tight.  The threat alone was enough to batter whatever little amount of restraint Steve had managed, and he struggled wildly.  Clint could hardly bear to consider that this wasn’t over, that there would be more fighting.  More suffering.  But the Hulk was angry.  The Hulk was _very_ angry.  When those dark eyes fell upon him, he saw no sign of Bruce.  Monsters battling monsters.  There was nothing any of them could do.

The Hulk snarled, growling like an animal, lifting Steve high into the air.  Steve pried at the fingers around his neck that were squeezing, choking.  The ground rattled again, a violent tremor of warning.  Clint struggled to keep his feet beneath him.  _Please, no more of this…_   He didn’t know what he wanted now.  Steve to die.  Steve to live.  This nightmare to simply end.  The pain to be over.  Steve to stop suffering.  That was what he wanted most of all.  And he didn’t want to watch one of the Avengers kill his captain, not if there was even a sliver of a chance that Steve could come back from this.  He could have just looked away, saved himself the trauma of witnessing the Hulk putting a stop to this.  But instead he fought.  “Bruce!” he yelled.  “Bruce, don’t!”

The Hulk stood against the onslaught of Steve’s mania.  He stood firm and held fast as whatever remained of Steve’s powers railed against him.  The world shook.  The very air seemed to vibrate.  The Hulk yanked Steve down, slamming him onto the ground.  The blow should have destroyed him, but Extremis and the serum were prolonging the agony.  Clint didn’t know if Bruce was simply lost to the anger he needed to defeat Steve or if Bruce had come to the realization that this was not going to work.  It didn’t matter.  A few punches of the Hulk’s fist would be all it took.

But the Hulk didn’t hit him.  “Hawk,” he growled.  “Now.”

Clint stood uselessly for what seemed to be forever before his riled brain pieced together the words and realized what the Hulk wanted.  Then he ran to the edge of the river.  That uncomfortable sensation of his bones vibrating and his heart twisting didn’t deter him.  Steve struggled, begging with fast, barely decipherable gasps that they let him go, that they kill him, that they do something to end this.  Clint didn’t hear him.  He hardly noticed as Thor came back and threw himself on Steve’s legs, as Tony staggered and limped closer to grab one of Steve’s arms and hold it down.  The Hulk pushed Steve deeper into the watery mud, Steve who screamed raggedly, who was now beyond reason, beyond _anything_.  Clint drew the arrow from his quiver and stood over his friend.  He pulled back on his bowstring, pointing the tip of the arrow right at Steve’s sternum.  “I got you,” he whispered, and he let it fly.

The tip sunk into Steve’s chest.  The Hulk pushed the flat of his palm over the fletching of the arrow and drove it in deep and held it there.

At first, nothing happened.  It seemed like forever that the Avengers were stiff and still, waiting and watching and hoping.  Fire finally rolled over their captain, fire so hot and so painful, and Steve wailed as Extremis and the super soldier serum burned Lahey’s drug away.  His scream was loud and deep and hoarse, the last breath left in his body.  He arched his back, struggling, and air exploded and hearts felt like they were bursting and the world shuddered and collapsed all around them.  Thor pulled away.  Tony let go, falling back into Clint’s legs.  Clint closed his eyes.  The Hulk threw himself over Steve and held the arrow in.  He held him down, held him tight.  He was holding him in case…

Steve didn’t.  And, a breath later, the inferno disappeared like it had never been there at all.

The Hulk raised his head, looking around uncertainly before slowly meeting the gazes of the team.  He carefully unfurled himself, releasing Steve’s limp body to the ground with tenderness that seemed impossible given his size and power.  The Avengers looked on as the massive creature gently set Steve down, as one huge hand cradled his head and the other set his arms to his chest.  He pulled the arrow free and grunted as he tossed it aside.  “No,” Tony whispered.  “No, no, no.  Is he…”

Thor crawled back over Steve’s body and pressed his ear frantically to Steve’s chest.   Clint collapsed to his knees and jabbed his fingers to the pulse point under Steve’s jaw.  There was no reason to.  It was obvious he was dead.  There was no breath in his body, no beat of his heart.  He was cold and unmoving.  Steve was gone.  Again.

The Hulk roared, clambering to his feet.  The echo of the cry was slow to dissipate, shaking them all down to their cores.  The sound of fires crackling, of wreckage moaning and settling, was so loud in the silence that followed.  Clint couldn’t tear his eyes from Steve’s face.  He was pale, white under the blood and grime.  The red haze of Extremis had vanished.  His eyes were dull, without even that disturbing glow that had for days haunted them.  They were empty.  Soulless.  Part of Clint thought to reach over and pull his eyelids shut, but he didn’t.  Not this time.  This time he had to believe.  _He’s going to wake up._   This had already happened.  Back in Lahey’s lab, when all this misery had begun.  He’d lived then when he should have died.  Captain America took the hits and got back up.  Captain America fought and survived.  He _survived_.  And that stupid goddamn tomato plant…  It had lived through this insanity, so Steve would, too.  The serum was undefeatable.  The serum had stabilized Extremis, and Steve was going to live.  Wasn’t he?

_He’s going to wake up!_

But he didn’t and the seconds dragged away.  So many.  Clint tried to grab each one and force it to stay with faith and hope and anticipation, but they were like water slipping through his fingers.  Seconds became a minute.  A minute became more.  The Avengers waited.  Steve still didn’t move.  He didn’t breathe.  He didn’t come back.

“Come on, Steve.”  It was Bruce.  He’d come out of the monster, shaken and rattled yet somehow so certain.  He, too, went down on his knees in the mud.  His own anger flashed in his now human eyes.  Anger and frustration.  Shards of doubt.  “Come on!  Don’t do this!”

“He’s dead,” Tony whispered brokenly.  Thor looked away to hide his grief.  “He’s not coming back.”

“He will!” Bruce snapped.  “I know it.  I wasn’t wrong about this.  I know it!”  Tony shook his head, wanting to argue but not having the words or the strength.  He set his hand to Bruce’s shoulder, but Bruce shrugged away.  He grabbed Steve and leaned over the other man’s still chest.  “Come on, Steve!  Wake up, damn it!  Come back!”

“Wake up,” Clint whispered.  He couldn’t say anything else.  There wasn’t anything inside him now except hope.  It was raw and visceral and so very desperate.  _Please…  This isn’t how this is going to end.  Wake up!_

Bruce lost his temper.  _“Come on, Steve!”_

Steve woke up.

He lurched off the ground with a gasp and a strangled cry.  His eyes went wide – his eyes that were _him_ again – and he turned onto his side, coughing deeply and raggedly dragging breath after breath into his trembling body.  Clint could hardly believe his eyes, his heart jumping into his throat.  “Steve?  Steve!”

Steve shuddered.  They all watched, wondering and fearful but hoping so much, as he blinked.  He blinked and he _saw_ them.  He lifted his head out of the muddy water slightly, squinting in exhaustion and confusion.  He managed to focus.  “Bruce?”

“Yeah,” Bruce said.  He leaned back, his own eyes brimming with relieved tears.  A weary smile graced his lips.  He nodded.  “Yeah.”

Tony groaned and collapsed against Bruce.  “Holy shit,” he mumbled.  “Just… holy shit.  That was incredible.  Let’s never do it again.”

Thor’s face broke into a ridiculously huge, weary grin.  He reached over and grasped Tony’s shoulder firmly and fondly.  “Agreed.”

Steve groaned and struggled to get his arms beneath him to push himself out of the muck.  Clint reached for his shoulders to help him sit, his own hands shaking.  He steadied him before wrapping an arm around him and dragging him close.  Steve tiredly grasped his forearm where it was braced across his chest, leaning unreservedly into Clint’s solid embrace.  Breathless still, he looked at his friends gathered closely around him.  Tears slipped from his beautifully clear eyes, eyes like a blue sky after a summer storm, and streaked down his face.  He laughed and sobbed at once in disbelief that he was really and truly free.  “It’s over?”

Warm and whole again, Clint finally found his voice.  “Yeah, Cap.  It’s over.”


	19. Chapter 19

Steve knew he was dreaming.

It was vivid, so real that he could taste the sweat on his upper lip and the sweetness of vanilla ice cream.  He could smell the coffee wafting out of their tenement and the exhaust of the cars rumbling down the streets.  He could hear his mother singing as she hemmed a hole in the knee of one of his pairs of pants.  He could feel her fingers gently rubbing menthol on his chest as he lay in bed.  He could see his father, one of the few good times when he wasn’t drunk, angry, and bitter, taking a moment to rest his huge hand on Steve’s head and offer him a fond smile.  He’d forgotten how proud that had made him, to have his father smile at him and ruffle his hair.

And there were other things.  More good things.  The taste of Bucky’s mother’s stew when it was hearty with meat.  Cold soda pop on a hot day at Ebbet’s Field.  Charcoal coating his fingers, so thick they were nearly black, and a picture he drew of the old man who worked day in and day out at the butcher shop down the street.  Sweeping the floor of the grocery store, the broom rubbing calluses into his fingers, and the satisfying feel of the paltry coins he’d earned clenched in his sweaty palm.  Running down the street, chasing Bucky with everything he had in him and not caring one bit if he got dirty or if he was late to dinner or if he couldn’t breathe so well.  His mother’s weary, waning smile that was still so powerful and beautiful and the priest’s firm and comforting hand on his shoulder.  Bucky’s cologne and his ugly brown suit.  Girls dancing and laughing.  Summer in Brooklyn.  Bucky lounging around in an undershirt and complaining incessantly about the heat, and Steve laughing and telling him he was so sweaty that he looked like a drowned rat and smelled about as nice.  The feel of an army uniform and the strength and respect and honor that came with it.  Doctor Erskine’s calm, wise eyes and confident smile.  Captain America.  His shield, strong and sure in his hands, and the troops cheering and rallying behind him.  Howard’s mischievous grin as he worked to keep the Commandos safe and HYDRA guessing.  Peggy’s red lips and sultry voice.  The way she smelled.  The way she tasted.  How she fit so perfectly in his arms.

So many good things.

Bucky complained about the heat in Germany, too, his hand wrapped in a dirty bandage and his hair plastered to his forehead with perspiration as they sat shoulder to shoulder beneath a looming pine and sucked down water from a canteen until their empty stomachs felt sick.  “War really is hell,” he groaned, closing his eyes and bracing his rifle across his lap.  “And here I thought it was always some bullshit sayin’.”  Steve closed his eyes, too.  He felt tired, the sort of deep exhaustion borne from over-exertion and relief.  “You’re real quiet.  You okay?  Rough day.”  That felt to be a monumental understatement.  “Phillips didn’t kick your ass too hard, did he?”

These were the moments.  They were few and far in between, but they were the times he could simply be who he was.  Not Captain America.  Not the leader of the Howling Commandos and the hero of the Allied war effort and a symbol to the nation.  He sank against the rough bark behind him and leaned a little into Bucky.  “Stevie?” Bucky prompted.

“No, I’m okay.  Just tired.”

“You should be.  You’ve been through a lot,” Bucky said.  The Commandos were on the other side of the clearing, collecting themselves and going over their gear.  They were still recovering after a difficult battle that had turned into a hellish nightmare.  They were intent on their own exhaustion and injuries, so they weren’t watching Captain America slip away.  They weren’t watching Bucky drape his arm over Steve’s shoulders and tug him closer.  Bucky wouldn’t ever admit it, but he was relieved, too.  Another fight was over, and they’d survived it.  They’d won, and they were both alive, a little worse for the wear maybe, but that could be fixed with some sleep and food and a laugh or two.

At least, they both hoped it could.  There were so many good things, but there were bad things as well.  Steve had spent so much of his life enduring them, overcoming them, and then ignoring them.  He was starting to realize that what someone had told him once was true: everything he’d put aside or buried would come back to haunt and hurt him.  He’d never really digested the bad things, so now they were crowding him all at once.  He couldn’t help the sob itching in his throat that quietly slipped through his lips.  Bucky noticed right away.  He’d always been pathetically unable to hide anything from him.  “Hey, what’s the matter?  Whatever it is, it’ll be alright.  You know it will be.”  Bucky’s voice was a quiet murmur against the shell of his ear.  “You’ll get through it.  You know you will.”

Steve wasn’t sure what they were talking about anymore.  Everything, maybe.  He knew he was dreaming.  This was a memory or a dream or something in the middle, but it wasn’t real.  And he knew there was a lot of pain back there, back beyond this moment where he could be who he was and let go.  Back where he’d been kidnapped and had his mind taken and his will crushed.  So many bad things.  His eyes burned.  “You keep promisin’.”

“’Course I do, because it’s true.  You’re Captain America.”

“You hate Captain America.”

“Fine, you got me.  I hate Captain America.”  Bucky smiled the same smile he had the last time they’d talked like this.  “Even you gotta admit the uniform is terrible.  And it was easier to get the dames before you turned into this.  Why do you think I kept you around?  To make me look good.”

Steve grunted.  It was silent for a moment after that, silent except for the sounds of the forest critters chirping and bugs buzzing and distant gunfire and even more distant screams.  Steve looked at his mud-splattered boots through half-lidded eyes.  “I’ll be okay,” he whispered.

“Sure you will, but you can cry if you want.  I won’t hold it over your head.”  Bucky’s grin turned coy.  “Too much.”  Steve choked out a pathetic laugh as Bucky pulled him even closer.  The promise of release was, for once, too strong and too much, and Steve finally cried.  Maybe acknowledging that it was fundamentally _okay_ to let go was what pushed him over.  Maybe he was just too fatigued, too burdened and broken to hang on anymore.  Everything was jumbled up inside him, like his mind had been shattered and he was trying to put the pieces back in the right places.  And looking at some of them, seeing what he’d done and what had been done to him, was unbearable.  So the tears came, harsh and hot, hotter than the godawful sweltering misery around them, and he let them.  He just didn’t have the strength to stop it now.  Not anymore.

Bucky let him cry.  Nobody was watching.  Nobody cared.  In all years they’d been together, Steve had never come apart like this.  Not when his father hit him and Bucky’s mother patched up his bleeding nose and gave Bucky a few extra pennies for a treat for the both of them even though money was so tight.  Not when he was sick and coughing and battling a frail body too small and weak for his heart and his dreams.  Not when the bullies threw their punches and spat their insults and kicked him down to the ground.  Not when his mother was dying and Bucky stood helplessly by his side and waited with him for an endless night to end.  Not even when he’d lost Bucky.  Not even when he’d woken up in a new world with nothing and no one.  He’d never cried anything more than a few unwilling tears before clenching down and soldiering on.  He’d never grieved, never let himself hurt.  Lord knew he’d deserved to, but he never had.

Eventually his sobs shifted to fast, shaking gasps, and then that quieted to long, slow breaths.  Bucky rubbed his back.  “Feel better?”

Steve couldn’t speak at first.  Then he swallowed and nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Good.”  They didn’t speak again for a bit, and now the forest was dark with dusk and heavy with silence.  Eventually Bucky tipped his head to the team.  “They’re waitin’.  Gonna have to go back and face it.”  Steve found himself clutching Bucky tighter without conscious thought.  Bucky actually chuckled and hugged him tighter.  “To hell with them.  We’re already on the shit list anyway.  We can rest a minute.  We deserve it, don’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“Battle’s over.  We won today, no matter what else anyone says.  This war ain’t gonna beat us.  Not you and not me.  We got it licked.”  Bucky nudged him.  “And I got you, punk. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve whispered.

“Always have, always will.”

Steve closed his eyes, contented even though he knew this peaceful moment wouldn’t last.  He would wake up, and everything would be waiting.  So many bad things.  But so many good things, too, like Clint’s arm around him as Bucky’s was now and Tony’s no-nonsense strength and Bruce’s unwavering faith in him.  Bucky’s smile in this memory and every memory before it.  Steve knew he was dreaming, but that was okay.  The good things were still there, and he could find them again.

* * *

When he did wake up, the first thing Steve noticed was that he wasn’t in pain anymore.  Not really, anyway.  Not the crippling, awful agony that had been the constant accompaniment to every minute of every day for what had felt like forever.  That was blessedly gone.  He was sore, but it was a dull ache humming in his head and body that felt contentedly detached.  It was almost enough to push him down once more into the comforting oblivion of slumber.  Almost.  As he moved closer and closer to awareness, to true touch and taste and smell and sight, he realized another thing that made going back to sleep impossible.

He could _think_ again.  The world was no longer broken down to its molecules, to a flurry of miserable and nauseating motion.  That power that had been buzzing inside him, so deafening and shrill and consuming, was completely and utterly silent.  The chaos had dug itself so deeply into his mind that he’d forgotten what this was like, silence and peace and control.  It was stark and sharp, and he felt empty like something had been forcefully ripped out of him.  The nightmares and twisted memories and hallucinations hammering him and beating him…  Someone else’s thoughts pressing on and pushing into his.  Twisting him.  Controlling him.  Driving him down under the hate and anguish and agony.  That angry voice that had scraped and mutilated and butchered his will…  It had sounded so much like his father.

But it was all gone now.  There was quiet that was loud and a little distressing for its novelty.  The world was simply as it had been before all of this hell, only colors and shapes and textures and truth, and his relief became downright overwhelming.  Tears escaped his eyes as he laid there and _existed,_ breathing deeply and shaking in the aftermath.  It was gone.  _It was all gone._

When he overcame the shock of that, he saw a ceiling that was way too far above his bed and a bed, for that matter, that definitely wasn’t his own.  This bed was ridiculously huge and fitted with sheets that were way too soft and too silky.  And the room in which he found himself was huge as well, filled with expensive furnishings and windows that went from the floor to the ceiling and revealed a rather impressive view of the New York City skyline bright with the midday sun.  It took his beleaguered mind a moment to realize he was in Stark Tower.

Steve squeezed his eyes shut with a groan as he lifted himself out of the bed.  His nerves tingled, his limbs stiff and not entirely coordinated.  Nothing felt right, like his body wasn’t really his own and the world wasn’t quite there.  His bare feet struck the floor, his toes scrunching on the nice carpet, and he lowered his head into his hands.  For a moment, he was dizzy and confused enough to entertain the possibility that none of it had actually happened.  He was back in the Tower about to spend another day by himself, not so patiently waiting for Director Fury to call to reinstate him to active duty.  He was back before this horror had started.  But the minute his fingers felt the short prickle of his hair, that seemingly small detail dashed any hope he’d had that the nightmare was only that: a nightmare.

He was almost too numb to feel.  Almost.

There was a knock at his bedroom door that made him jump in alarm.  Steve gathered his wits, or what remained of them at any rate.  He wiped at his eyes and scrubbed his clammy hands down his pajama pants.  “Come in,” he called.

The door opened just a bit, and Clint poked his head inside.  “Hey.  JARVIS said you were finally awake, so I thought I’d come check on you.”  He pushed the door open hesitantly, like he didn’t quite know what to think.  Honestly, Steve didn’t know either.  This was the first moment in what felt to be forever that he felt… _normal_.  Mostly.  At least he thought he did.  He wasn’t quite certain of anything.  He’d gotten so used to the perverted whims of insanity that the world was off-kilter and blunt and rounded around the edges.  “How are you feeling?”

Steve drew a deep breath.  “Okay.  I guess.  I, uh…  I don’t know.”  He really didn’t.

Clint looked like he wanted to press him for a better explanation, but he stopped himself.  He opened the door wider and stepped inside the spacious room.  Steve got a good look at his friend.  There were bruises all over Clint’s face, the hints of healing scrapes and nicks and cuts, and he was trying valiantly to hide a serious limp.  From the fog in his head things were emerging.  Clint’s eyes wide in horror.  Clint’s body violently tossed aside.  Clint screaming at him to stop.

Clint knew what he was thinking without him speaking, and he was across the room in a few steps.  “Before you get worked up, just listen, okay?  It’s over.  We’re alright,” he promised.  He was a tad winded and more than a tad worried.  “It’s all okay.  How much do you remember?”

Steve didn’t have a good answer to that question, at least not one that satisfied him.  Some memories were very clear.  Painfully clear.  There were so many.  _So many_.  But there were also huge gaps in his mind, things he didn’t understand.  A blur of words and lies and convoluted facts.  Steve struggled to hold on against his mounting despair and frustration.  It took him more than a second to realize he was shaking.  “I don’t know.  Not much.”

Clint nodded sadly.  “Bruce thought you might not.  He, uh…”  It was painfully obvious that Clint didn’t know what to say.  “The drug’s out of your body.  And the serum got rid of Extremis without much effort on Bruce’s part.  He said you’re going to be alright.  You’re recovering.”

He wasn’t.  He didn’t want to.  And he couldn’t help the harsh words that spilled from his mouth.  It was all right in front of them, the goddamn elephant in the room, and he wasn’t going to pretend it wasn’t there.  “I don’t care.”

“Don’t do this, Steve.  It’s okay.”

Steve shook his head, fighting to stay calm.  “No, it’s not,” he hissed.  _I can’t do this.  I can’t._ But he had to.  He had to know the truth.  “Clint, I…  How many people did I…”

“Not as many as it could have been,” Clint quickly supplied as he moved closer.  The bed sagged slightly beside Steve, but he was too distraught to understand why at first.  He was just sinking.  Sinking down deep.  _Drowning_.  “Steve, it’s not as bad as you–”

“How can it not be?” Steve hoarsely demanded.  He wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t come.  That emptiness inside him was quickly filling in with guilt, guilt stronger than anything he had known.  He’d been ashamed of himself plenty of times in past, blamed himself for his short-comings, his failures.  But now his heart ached like it never had before.  It was a hard and heavy lump in his chest, barely beating at all, and this deep set throbbing that he could hardly stand rolled over him in unforgiving, icy waves.  This was worse than failure.  It was worse than fear, worse than anger.  “I…  I should have tried harder.  I should have…  It felt so good to let it go.  God damn it, Clint…  I…”

“It’s not your fault,” Clint said.

“The hell it’s not!” Steve cried, and it was all _there_ , right beneath the surface.  The rage and pain and fear.  It wasn’t as wild and violent, as unrestrained and terrifying, as it had been when that poison had been inside his head, but it was just as devastating and visceral.  And with the anger came the urge to hurt something, someone.  He held that back, but God if it wasn’t damning.  That hadn’t been there before.  That had _never_ been a part of him before.  He could barely breathe, barely _think_ again, a prisoner once more of his tormented emotions.  He thought of his father, his father hitting him and hitting his mother, _lashing out._ What had he done?  What the hell had he done?

What sort of monster had he let himself become?

The fact that Clint could read his mind so eerily and completely made him question again if any of this was real even though he knew it was.  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That’s a lie,” he said around a gasp.  He clutched his chest where his heart was breaking.  His hands shook.  “Don’t lie to me.  _Please_.”

“I’m not.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  Stop doing this to yourself.  Stop it now.”  Steve jabbed his teeth into his tongue until he tasted blood.  Clint grabbed his shaking hand like he just wanted hold it so it would stop shaking and pulled it away from his chest.  “Words can only do so much.  I know that.  And you know that I know what this is like.  Better than anyone, I _know_ what this is like.”  That soft declaration cut through the fire inside him, and he sucked a deep breath in through his nose and held it as tightly as he could in his lungs.  Clint shook his head and grounded him.  “I’ve been there.  I know what it’s like to have someone in your mind, someone else’s thoughts mixing with yours, someone forcing you down and making you do things you don’t want to do.  And you can’t fight.  You know it’s happening, and you can’t do a damn thing to stop it.  Not a goddamn thing and you hate yourself in a way that I don’t think anyone else can ever really understand.”

Steve exhaled.  It was hard to let the breath go.  Clint was close to him, very close.  “I know how long it hurts.  I know how _hard_ it hurts.  And what he did to you, what they all did to you…  It was worse than torture, worse than captivity.”  Steve flinched.  That was all there, too.  It was a blur right now, a haze of things that were too distressing and painful to even consider.  Trauma that went so far beyond anything he’d ever experienced.  Clint wasn’t trying to upset him.  He was only trying to make the point that Steve was a victim and not the aggressor.  It wasn’t in the least bit comforting, even if it was true.  “It’s going to take time to get over it.  It’s going to take time to recover from this.”  Like time could make this better.  Like time could erase the damage he’d done or the damage done to him.  He could feel how deep it went.  It was a wound straight down to his soul.

But Clint slid his arm around Steve, just like he had before, just like Bucky had so many times in the past, and held firm.  They sat silently for a moment before Clint drew a deep, soft breath.  “You know what separates the good men from the bad men?  It’s what we do with our anger and our pain.  Somebody told me that once.”  He smiled weakly, but his eyes were bright with affection, understanding, and certainty.  “That same somebody told me that I didn’t have go it alone.  I’m with you.  We’re all with you.”

“I can’t do this,” Steve whispered.

Clint slid down to the floor in front of him.  It obviously pained him, but he didn’t grimace.  And he didn’t look away.  “Yes, you can.  I know you can.  SHIELD wanted us to kill you, but we didn’t.  You know why?  Because we trusted that you would keep fighting.  I did and Tony did.  Bruce did.  We trusted you to hang onto yourself as long as you could.  And you did.”

“But in the end–”

“No.  In the end, you did the best you could.  You got knocked down, so now you get back up.  That’s what you do, Steve.  You’re Captain America and you get back up.”  He wasn’t…  He didn’t know right then.  He didn’t know who he was or what he was.  Everything was so jumbled and mixed up inside him.  He’d never doubted himself like this.  _Never._   That was surprisingly sharp and aggravating.  He was weightless.  Hadn’t he told Bruce that?  He wasn’t sure.  It felt like his mind still wasn’t his own.  All it took was a glance into that haze and he was drifting and lost, his eyes closing and his chest constricting. 

Clint wasn’t going to let him go back there.  “Hey.  Listen to me.  Listen, Steve.”  Steve breathed through the pain and ignored the hellish tendrils trying to pull him away.  “I won’t lie to you.  People are dead.  And people are angry.”  He winced and felt something inside him withering even more.  That wound in his soul was pulsing and throbbing and aching for something to finish the job.  Clint wasn’t going to let that happen, either.  “But there are people, a lot more people, who saw you fighting against what AIM did to you down to the last minute, to the last second.  Who saw you put the tunnel on the other side of the river instead of back in the water where everyone inside it would have drowned.  They saw _you_ stop the helicarrier from crushing the city no matter how much it hurt.”  Steve closed his eyes.  He remembered that as well.  The pain had been crushing.  But there had been the strength to stand against it, the strength he’d found in himself.  The strength he always found in himself.

Clint nodded, seeing Steve’s eyes soften and the agony fade from them.  “You’re not alone,” he promised, grabbing Steve’s hands and firmly squeezing them both.  “Believe me.  You aren’t.”

When Steve found some measure of courage, he nodded, staring into Clint’s eyes.  Clint’s familiar eyes.  And Clint grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him forcefully into his arms, hugging tight.  It was an uncharacteristically open show of emotion.  Their friendship had always been more of the quiet sort, steadfast but not showy, but this was raw and indicative of just how deeply hurt and afraid Clint had been.  “I thought I lost you,” he said.  “I thought I wasn’t going to get you back.”

A moment later, Clint pulled away with half of an embarrassed sniffle.  He managed a tight grin.  Steve drew a deep breath, centering himself and swallowing the knot in his throat back down.  He felt better.  It wasn’t much, but it could be a start.  Clint rubbed a knuckle in his eye before climbing gingerly to his feet.  “We’re going to get through this, Steve.  I promise you.  And I’m going to be with you every step of the way, just like you were for me when I needed you.  To the end of the line, right.”

Steve’s lips curled into a small smile.  “That’s what Bucky used to tell me.”

Clint nodded.  “I figured.”

“I like hearing you say it.”

“Yeah.”  Clint drew a deeper breath, and he smiled softly.  He tipped his head to the door.  “Come on.  You’ve been sleeping for a couple of days, and the others are worried.  They’re waiting for you.”

Steve hesitated.  A thought of _I can’t do this_ burst through his brain again, but he was able to stop it before it got too strong.  He pushed himself slowly and gingerly to his feet.  He expected there to be pain or dizziness, and there was, but it wasn’t so bad.  He could handle it.  He _could_ do this.  “Just, uh…”  He looked down at his rumpled undershirt and pajama pants.  His mouth tasted horrendous, and he honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d showered or brushed his teeth.  “Let me get dressed.”

“Forget about it.  After what happened, I doubt Captain America with morning breath is going to bother them.”

* * *

Steve didn’t know what to expect when the Avengers saw him.  He hadn’t expected them to be angry (at least, he’d prayed they wouldn’t be), and they weren’t.  But he also hadn’t expected so much support.  “Steven!” Thor boomed, and he was the first one across the room.  His huge, muscular arms were around Steve without reservation, hauling the reticent Captain America to his chest with an overabundance of jubilation and strength.  Steve coughed as the air was squeezed out of his lungs.  Natasha was next, abandoning her cool façade for a relieved embrace of her own.  Bruce grinned and took Steve’s hand in a firm shake before drawing him in a sloppy hug.

And Tony was smiling a colossal smile.  He punched Steve’s bicep.  “You look good for having died twice in two weeks, Rogers.”

Pepper gave Stark a warning glare before drawing Steve to her tenderly.  When she pulled back from him, she didn’t bother hiding the tears in her eyes, laughing through a sob.  She wiped the wayward droplets away, and something huge and shiny caught Steve’s eye.  Apparently he’d missed more than he’d realized.  “Congratulations,” he said softly.  “He finally asked?”

Pepper realized to what he was referring and glanced down at the engagement ring adorning her left ring finger.  She flushed a little.  “Oh, well.  Yes.”

Tony rolled his eyes.  “Uh, no.  No, I didn’t.  I did _not_.  She asked herself because God forbid I ever be allowed to do anything on my own terms around here.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Pepper returned, folding her arms over the cream blouse she was wearing.  “When have you _ever_ done _anything_ on anyone else’s terms?  If I have learned anything in my time with you it’s that you can’t do a thing for yourself.  You are the laziest, most egotistical, unapologetic–”

“Can I at least pick out the menu?  No girly wedding food.  You go to a wedding and order a steak and get a square of raw beef on a cracker with weeds growing out of the plate.”

“If I leave you in charge of that, _all_ we’ll serve is liquor and cake.”

“I don’t see how that’s a problem.”

“Banner, you really gonna live here with this?  Because I wouldn’t,” Clint said, shaking his head at the bickering.

Bruce winced, but Tony spoke before he could.  “No, he’s staying.  Just because I’m committing to this doesn’t mean I have to stop seeing other people.  Bruce and I have a man love that really transcends life itself, and I’m not willing to give that up.”  Tony rolled his eyes as though in acquiescence at Bruce’s annoyed, flummoxed expression.  “Alright already.  If it’s that important to you, I’ll get you a rock, too.”

Thor grimaced, shaking his head in confusion and disapproval.  “I do not understand this strife,” he said.  “Jane has told me that Midgardian weddings are a grand and joyous occasion, much like those on Asgard.”

“They are,” Natasha said.  “Stark’s just being an ass.  And Banner’s even more whipped than he is.”  Three indignant pairs of eyes shot to the master spy, but she made a point of ignoring them with a bit of a sly smile on her lips.  “How are you feeling, Steve?”

Suddenly they were all staring him, and the ribbing and joking and levity died.  Their concern was sincere, and Steve felt ashamed and uncomfortable.  He swallowed through a dry throat.  “I’m okay.”

“Honestly?” Tony said suspiciously, appraising him evenly.  “Because I smell bullshit.”

“I should be asking all of you that,” Steve said, struggling again to be firm against the guilt.  He felt Clint beside him, steady against his flank.  “If you’re all okay after what I…”  The memories pushed at the edges of his mind.  It took a lot to hold them back, even as disconnected and scrambled as they were.

“We’re fine,” Bruce said dismissively.  “How are _you_ feeling?”

The answer pushed at his lips.  The automatic response.  The same thing he always said because admitting he was hurt was akin to admitting he couldn’t fight and couldn’t stand up and couldn’t be who he needed to be.  It took a lot to force that back because it was a part of who he was and how he was raised.  It was engrained in him.  But he did.  “Lost,” he said.  God, it was hard to admit that.  And there were other things he knew he needed to admit.  He felt different.  Hurt.  Violated.  Scarred.  And he was still angry.  It was going to take a lot more to accept and deal with those feelings.  But for now, being honest with himself and with them that he wasn’t simply okay was enough.  “And tired and sore.  Things are all messed up.  In my head.”

Bruce nodded.  “After what you went through, it’s understandable.  It’ll take some time for everything to settle.  But no serious pain?  No headaches?  None of the… other stuff?”

The other stuff.  That was such a ridiculous way to refer to it that Steve actually smiled.  “No.”

The team was visibly relieved.  Bruce let out a little sigh.  “Good.  I mean, the tests showed Dan’s drug was gone, and your cells are all repairing themselves and your DNA’s back to normal, but, you know, there really wasn’t any way to be sure without you telling us.”

“Kind of a bummer, though,” Tony said.  He clapped Steve on the shoulder and pulled him deeper into the common room rather forcefully.  On the table there was pizza and soda and a rather impressive array of junk food.  The huge flatscreen TV was quietly playing the news.  Tony manhandled Steve into a chair, and Clint went about getting him a plate and loading it with a couple of steaming slices.  “I mean, you were seriously badass.  I kept trying to convince Bruce to figure out a way to just turn off the crazy-as-shit parts and leave just a little of the awesomeness, but he’s too much of stick in the mud.  Something about doing no harm or some such.  I dunno.”  The pizza was placed in front of him.  Thor came with a bottle of water, which he unscrewed, poured into a glass, and set before Steve as well.  “Here.  Eat.  Drink,” Tony commanded, though not meanly.  Steve turned and looked up at the other man.  His eyes were softer, and his face was lined with genuine concern.  He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like Stark had become his friend sometime during this.  And Thor had somehow arrived from who knew where.  He really didn’t understand.  _Lost,_ he thought.  _Damn good way to describe it._

Tony was still babbling as he sat at the expensive table beside him and resumed with his lunch.  “The Avengers were already cool, but with Captain America blowing shit up with his mind?  Word.”  Steve didn’t have any idea what that meant, but it was a gentle jest, aimed at lightening the burden of dark times and helping him to feel better rather than praying on his insecurities and making fun of him.  Steve couldn’t explain it, but the tension between Tony and him was significantly lessened, not quite gone but definitely not as volatile as it had been.  That made whatever had happened the last few days seem even more pressing.  He got frustrated at the stubborn refusal of his mind to piece together the few clear memories he did have into anything coherent.  “Cap?”

“I just don’t…  Could somebody tell me what happened?”

The team shared concerned glances, which only served to irritate Steve more.  Still, he reminded himself that they were only looking out for his best interests and kept his temper in check, even more tightly than normal.  He was overly sensitive to it now.  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Bruce slowly asked.

Steve had to think about that for a minute.  It was hard to make things make sense.  “Waking up here, I think.  I’m not sure.”  His eyes fell to Pepper where she sat next to Tony, and suddenly a warm rush of things that were plain as day came out of the fog.  Pepper smiled compassionately.  “Going with you to the Met.  That I remember really clearly.”  Everything else was a mess of awful sensations and cruel hands and nightmares and hallucinations.  He didn’t say that.  They didn’t need to know how bad it was.

Bruce looked at Tony and then at Clint.  He was nervous and hesitant.  “You sure you want to hear this, Steve?  It’s not a pleasant story.”

He was surprised at his own certainty.  “Yes.”

They told him.  They all gathered at the table and ate lunch as Bruce and Tony and Clint explained everything that had happened since the hostage situation at the bank (which felt like a lifetime ago).  Some of the things Steve knew already, but he couldn’t make himself say he did.  The shame at how low and out of control he’d been stung him deeply, and he couldn’t just ignore it and brush it aside like they seemed to be able to.  They told him how Lahey’s drug had altered his DNA, how the super soldier serum had battled it.  They told him how some guy named Samuel Sterns, someone who’d called himself the Leader and who’d apparently been so intelligent that he could very nearly see the future, had orchestrated everything to create the perfect weapon out of Steve.  Steve realized now that voice that had been in his head, so loud and threatening, hadn’t been his father’s voice at all.

The story went on.  His abduction.  Sterns’ escape and attack on the helicarrier.  Monica Rappaccini.  Bruce glossed over her, avoiding the details, and that was just as well for Steve.  He did remember her, all too well.  Not so much by name but by face and voice and cruelty and hatred.  He remembered everything she had done to him.  And he remembered how _good_ it had felt to kill her.  Bruce watched him in sympathy and understanding.  Steve realized that was because Bruce had been there.  Bruce had seen a lot of what had happened.  Too much for Steve to be comfortable.  “Sterns made you do it,” Bruce reminded him.  That was all they said about it.  Instead they discussed a little about Extremis, about how _that_ , in all the world of chemicals and coincidences, was the thing to save him.  And when they were done talking, Steve felt better, but he didn’t, too.  He supposed life was going to be a whole knot of contradictions for a while.  He hoped not forever.

“Eat something, Steve,” Pepper prodded, noticing that his plate of pizza was untouched.  “You need it.”  Steve looked down at the pizza, trying not to recall how sick he’d been.  He grabbed a slice, also trying to ignore everybody watching him.  It tasted surprisingly good.  They ate in silence for a while.  Admittedly they’d only shared one other meal together like this as a team at Stark’s shawarma place after the Chitauri invasion, but this was familiar and comfortable.  Still, Steve felt somewhat out of place.  Not quite himself.  He supposed that too might go on for a while.

The news came back from commercials, and Steve felt his stomach drop.  They were preparing for some sort of update on the attack in New York.  The others had been watching him (and not being at all subtle about it), so his paling face immediately drew their attention.  “J, shut the TV off,” Tony ordered.

“No,” Steve said shortly.  He stood from his chair and went closer.  “Make it louder.  Please.”

The AI hesitated, obviously waiting for Tony’s permission.  Tony said nothing to the contrary, so the volume increased to the point where it was readily audible.  An anchorwoman on MSNBC was speaking.  “The President’s press conference this afternoon is expected to confirm Captain Rogers’ involvement in the attack on Midtown Manhattan two days ago.  What’s not known at this time is how the public will react to this information.  Your opinion, Sally?”

The camera shifted to another woman who was clearly standing outside of Stark Tower.  “I think what the President has to say at this point doesn’t matter that much.  This has been a fairly traumatic and galvanizing experience for the city and the country as a whole.  Seeing the Avengers fighting Captain America, seeing the devastation done to the FDR Drive and the Midtown Tunnel…  People want honesty.  People want answers, and they’re hoping that President Ellis will give them.  This is the first official response from the government on the attack.”

“Is there any more information on how this event might have related to the explosion recorded at Stark Tower earlier this week and the previous hostage situation on 42nd Street?”

“Not at this point,” the woman responded.  “Again, the President is expected to clarify the situation.  Twenty-six people were killed during the events on the East River, and grieving family members are asking why and want whoever was responsible brought to justice.”

Steve felt his blood turn to ice.  For some ludicrous reason, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might face punishment for his actions, however involuntary they might have been.  “The person who was responsible has been brought to justice,” Clint said tightly.  “Steve, don’t worry about this.  SHIELD is taking care of it.”

“Hiding the truth?” Tony said unhappily.  “Right.  Damage control.  Containment.”

“Would you prefer the alternative?” Natasha returned.

“Quiet, guys,” Bruce ordered.

“Whatever Captain America’s role was, it’s been clear from multiple eye witness accounts that he was fighting _against_ the Avengers,” the first woman said.  The program began playing amateur videos taken of the altercation.  It was difficult to see what was happening because the fight was moving so rapidly, a dizzying blur of color and motion.  He saw himself standing against his team, battling them, destroying the FDR Drive.  He was violent and vicious, but he had no memory of the details of it.  He had no memory of _any_ of it.  Disturbing didn’t begin to describe it.  He must have been shaking because Clint grabbed his shoulder and held him steady.

“Eye witness accounts also indicate the Avengers were trying to rescue Captain Rogers, which would suggest that he was perhaps at least an unwilling participant or more likely a prisoner of whoever was instigating the attack,” the second woman added.  Video shifted to Steve kneeling in front of a short, ugly man.  Steve vaguely knew him.  Sterns.  Tony and Thor were shouting but the words weren’t clear.  “We haven’t as yet been able to identify the man seen with Rogers.  At this point, all accounts indicate he vanished some time during the fight, but SHIELD has closed down the sight of the attack and very little information has been made available.  There’s just a lot of uncertainty and fear, and with both the Avengers and SHIELD silent, people are uneasy.”

The woman in the newsroom looked like she was hearing something in the ear piece she wore, and her eyes focused and she nodded.  “Okay, we’re taking you live to the White House.  The President is about to begin his press conference.”

“Turn it off,” Steve said.

Bruce shook his head.  “Steve–”

Steve’s voice gained a harder edge.  “Just turn it off.”  The screen turned to black.

“It’s all alright, Cap.  Ellis is going to exonerate you.   He gave Fury his word.  Secretary Pierce is working with the government to protect our interests,” Natasha said.

“You mean SHIELD’s interests,” Tony corrected.  His entire stance read confrontation.  “Fury doesn’t want to lose Captain America as his emblem, right?  And having the Avengers involved in another crisis in Midtown is a PR disaster waiting to happen.”

“That’s not what this is about and you know it, Tony,” Natasha coolly returned.  “SHIELD is trying to limit the damage before it gets out of control.  You want to see the Cap arrested or worse?  He’s a victim in all of this, but people are looking for someone to blame.  We need to protect our own.”

It was too much.  Hearing Natasha say that was _too much_.  He wasn’t a victim.  And even if he was, he wasn’t going to be babied and guarded like none of this had been his fault.  “No,” Steve said.  He drew a deep breath, fighting to keep his emotions under control and his composure intact.  “Pepper, can you set up a press conference?”

Pepper was completely taken aback by the request.  She glanced among Tony, Bruce, and Steve, clearly uncertain of what her answer should be.  “Sure, I suppose I can.  When?”

“As soon as possible,” Steve said.

“Steve, you don’t need to do this.  You don’t owe anyone anything.  And even if you feel you do, it doesn’t have to be now.  Wait a few days until you’re feeling better,” Clint advocated.

Steve shook his head and stepped back around the table and toward the door.  “No, it’s gotta be now.  People deserve to know the truth.”  He wasn’t even sure what the truth was, but whatever it was, he needed to try to make amends for what he’d done.

* * *

He showered.  Shaved.  Brushed his teeth.  He tried to make himself feel and look normal.  He put on his uniform.  He grabbed his shield and ran his hands along its smooth curves and slid it onto his back.  It didn’t feel right, but it felt good, if that made sense.  Not much was at this point.  Maybe Clint was right and it would be better to postpone this a few days until his head was clearer.  But he couldn’t.  As he’d stood there, watching the scenes of the destruction replay before his eyes, listening to the people struggling to understand how their national hero had been turned to evil, he knew he needed to do this now.  He felt like he was teetering on an edge, and if he didn’t pull himself back right then, he might not ever be able to.  He needed to face this.  Running away wasn’t the answer.  Neither was lying or deluding himself or rationalizing his actions.  None of it was rational.

“I’m not looking to punish myself,” he said as he noticed Bruce in the mirror of his bathroom.  Bruce stood at the door, watching him.  “So if you’re here to talk me out of this because you’re worried for me, don’t bother.”

“I’m not,” Bruce said.  He straightened his posture slightly and folded his arms over his chest.  “And I’m not worried about you.”  He smiled faintly, but he wasn’t comfortable despite the fact he’d come.  “Tony is.  He sent me here to make sure your head was screwed on straight.”

Steve caught sight of his own reflection as he turned away from the vanity.  He didn’t like what he saw, how sick and low and exhausted he was.  Between Extremis and the serum, all of his wounds had healed days ago.  Still, he felt and looked run down with pale skin and empty, hollow eyes.  He looked like his body had been through a hell of an ordeal, which he knew wasn’t far from the truth.  And when he saw his hair, cut so short, shorter than it ever had been, all the horrible things about which he was trying not to think bombarded him.  “I can do this,” he said.  “I have to.”

“Why?”  Bruce wasn’t questioning his choice.  He simply wanted to understand.  It was odd that he was even here, that Bruce, who always kept himself so distant and detached and guarded, was the one having this conversation with him.  Bruce was at his side.  It had been odd back there, too, in AIM’s lab.

Steve gave a short breath.  “There are some things I do remember.  I remember you made me promise to stay who I am,” he said.  “This is part of that.”

Bruce’s tense expression softened a bit.  He seemed different, too.  Like this had changed him.  “What else do you remember?”

Steve thought about that for a moment.  “You kept your promise,” he said simply.  He walked out of the bathroom.  “You found the answer and saved my life.  Thank you for that.  And thank you for sticking with me.  I know that much, that you were there taking care of me.  Keeping me sane.”

“That’s not how it went,” Bruce said quietly.  His eyes were dark with trouble, with his own torments.  Neither of them had emerged from this unscathed.  “Not entirely anyway.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Steve, I–”

“I know you had no choice, Bruce.  I’ll figure out a way to get over it.”

“It’s Robert.”

Steve’s face fractured in confusion.  “What?”

Bruce frowned, his brow creasing as though in distaste for what he was about to say.  “My name.  It’s Robert.  Robert Bruce Banner.”  That was surprising.  He didn’t remember reading anything in Bruce’s file from SHIELD about that back when they’d first met.  Bruce took a step closer.  “I started going by Bruce when I was older.  Maybe ten?  Not sure that I remember anymore.”  Steve stared at him, not seeing at all what the other man meant or why he was telling him this.  Bruce looked down, his eyebrows lifting in an expression of resignation.  “I, uh… My dad used to beat me, too.”

That struck deeply.  Steve stiffened.  He supposed he should have expected his deepest, darkest secrets would have been exposed.  With the way Lahey’s drug had ripped into his mind and pulled all of his worst nightmares and memories to the surface, it had been inevitable that the others would learn the truths he hadn’t even ever really admitted to himself.  Obviously Sterns had.  Still, he was angry and shocked and betrayed, so much so that he didn’t notice at first that Bruce was telling him more.  “And my dad’s father beat him.  Some sort of screwed up Banner family legacy, I guess.  My dad was so convinced that I was going to be the same sort of monster as his own father that he named me after him.  From the get go in his mind, I was destined to be bad, and he couldn’t deal with that.  He hated me as much as he loved me, and he couldn’t reconcile that with anything other than violence, so he hit me.  He hit me all the time.  And he hit my mother for having me.  He did it until I was old enough and big enough to hit him back, but then it was just like I was validating his beliefs.  Like this whole thing about me being born a monster was some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.  Life and its goddamn ironies.”

Bruce’s eyes gained a harder, more focused glint.  Steve realized he was staring and looked away.  He didn’t know why he was surprised.  Something told him he shouldn’t have been.  “I tried to put it behind me, figuring that anger was just that: anger.  It couldn’t define me.  I believed that until the Other Guy.”  Bruce shrugged a little, and the corner of his mouth turned up into a sheepish smile.  “I’ve never told anyone about it really.  But I thought you deserved to know.  You understand what it was like, dealing with someone else’s anger like that.  And you taught me something.”

Steve shook his head.  Bruce was wrong.  He didn’t understand.  “What?”

“Meeting you was intimidating.  I thought you were perfect.  The epitome of everything I wasn’t.  You had to be for the science to work on you where it failed on me.  But you taught me it’s not about that.  You and I… we’re not so different.  And if a good man like you can come from this kind of pain, then I wasn’t born flawed.  You can’t be born good or bad.  You choose to be.”  Bruce cocked his head in a touch of rueful amusement.  “You just figured that out a long time before I did.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Bruce,” Steve said.  “If it wasn’t for the Hulk, I…  It wouldn’t have ended like it did.  Not sure that I was the hero this time.”

“You were.  You still are.  That not having a choice applies to you, too.”

Steve grunted a small laugh.  It would take more to convince himself of that, but Bruce’s faith in him was encouraging to say the least.  Bruce had had a lot of faith in him.  “Well, I wasn’t the only hero.”

“And you’re giving me credit for something I didn’t do.  Tony told me to trust the Other Guy.  Never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad I did.”  Bruce smiled.  It was more than obvious he was relieved and more than a little proud of himself.  “He saved your life.”

They were quiet after that for a long moment.  Comfortable and contemplative.  Bruce reached a hand over to Steve and clasped his shoulder.  “Come on.”

They walked to the elevator.  In the hallway, the others were waiting.  Thor stood in full armor, his red cape brushing his heels.  Both Natasha and Clint wore their customary battle uniforms, the SHIELD emblem proudly displayed on their shoulders.  Bruce folded his arms over his chest after he jabbed his thumb into the button to summon the lift.  Tony had Iron Man’s helmet under his arm.  He appraised Steve evenly.  “You look mostly decent.”

Steve winced and shook his head, uncomfortable and uncertain.  “You guys don’t have to–”

“We’re a team, aren’t we?” Tony said.

Steve released a slow breath.  A team.  He supposed if nothing else good came of this, there was that.  The reaffirmation of how much the world needed the Avengers.  And the realization that maybe they needed each other just as much.  He shared a look with Clint, Clint who nodded firmly.  “Yeah.”  _I can do this._

They rode down to the lobby in silence.  When the elevator doors opened, they were bombarded with the flashes of bulbs and microphones jabbed in their direction and video cameras.  Stark Industries’ security guards were holding back the flood of reporters.  Steve couldn’t make himself go forward for a moment; he’d been in front of the media before, both during the war and after the Chitauri invasion, but he didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.  Suddenly, as he saw people’s shock and alarm and dismay as they got their first real look at him, he wondered if maybe he’d been wrong about this.  Maybe he wasn’t ready for the world to see him.  Maybe he wasn’t as strong or brave as he thought.  Maybe he wasn’t okay.  Maybe–

Pepper was there.  She smiled softly at him and gestured toward the Stark Industries podium that had been set up for him.  He drew a deep breath and made his legs walk, made himself put one foot in front of the other.  He felt like everyone in the world was watching him, and maybe that wasn’t far from the truth.  He could see over the huge group of reporters that an even larger crowd of people was assembled outside the building.  Some had flowers and were waving signs that had his shield’s emblem on it and boldly written slogans about supporting the Avengers.  There were detractors as well, protestors held to the side by the police, but they were few and he tried not to look at them.

The Avengers flanked him as he came up to the podium.  There were numerous microphones and other equipment fastened to it.  The muffled hum of conversation in the spacious lobby quieted as he stood there.  In short order, the room was entirely silent and everyone was waiting.  Steve stood stiffly, trying to gather himself and figure out what he’d wanted to say.  Before he’d been so sure of what needed to be done.  Now he wasn’t, and his heart was pounding and he was having a hard time gathering his battered thoughts.  Horror clenched his belly and spread up to seize his lungs.

“Cap’s got something to say,” Stark announced, “so everyone listen up.”

Everyone was already listening, but Tony’s calm, composed words rescued him and stemmed the panic attack.  The haze faded quickly, and the darkness inside dissipated.  Steve could think again.  He never thought such a fundamental thing could feel so new and empowering.  He cleared his throat nervously.  “I do have something to say.  It’s not much, but I appreciate all of you taking the time to listen.”  Here he paused, and now it was easier to summon his strength and determination.  “Earlier today President Ellis asked our nation to absolve me for my involvement in the attack on New York City a couple of days ago.  He told you all to remember that I was a prisoner, that my participation was against my will.”  Steve shook his head slightly and bowed his eyes.  The shame was there, heavy and murky in his heart.  “It’s true.  The same group of terrorists that took the President hostage a few months ago tried to turn me into a weapon against our country and our world.  They kidnapped me, experimented on me, and forced me to do things I swore both to myself and to our nation’s leaders that I would never do.  They forced me to fight against my friends and threaten my home and hurt innocent people.  They forced me to betray everything I believe in.”  He faltered slightly, struggling to control his emotions.  Hearing himself confess the truth was harder than he’d anticipated.  “Please believe me when I tell you I fought.  I did everything I could to stop it, but it wasn’t enough.  I wasn’t strong enough or tough enough or good enough.”

Steve’s voice broke.  He didn’t know if anyone else noticed, but the crack in his tone caused him to swallow his next words uncomfortably.  He finally managed to make himself look up from his hands where they were folded on the sleek podium.  He felt the team behind him, their eyes boring into him.  He felt sweat building on the small of his back under his uniform.  He shifted his weight nervously.  _I can do this.  I can._ “It’s not an excuse.  There _is_ no excuse.  And I’m not looking for sympathy or pity or even understanding.  I’m not even sure I agree with the President that I deserve your thanks instead of your hatred.  If there’s a price to be paid for this, I should pay it.  And if all it can be is the weight of my conscience for the rest of my life, I’ll gladly bear it.  This shook us all.  It shook me.  It really shook me.  What happened, what they did to me and what I did to you, is going to haunt me for as long as I live.  For those of you who lost loved ones because of what I did, I am eternally sorry.  I know it’s not much, but it’s all I can offer.  My apology and my promise to make certain this is the one and only time something like this happens.”

He sighed softly.  He was more comfortable now that everything was out there in the open.  Like the proverbial weight off his chest.  People were still watching him, a sea of open and eager eyes before him.  He went on.  “I give you my word that I will never raise my hand against innocent people again.  I don’t know how much that is worth to you anymore, but I pray it’s still worth something at least.  The world is a dark and dangerous place.  A lot of things have changed over the last seventy years, but that definitely hasn’t.  You need, no, you _deserve_ people defending you.  Liberty and truth and freedom _deserve_ people protecting it.  The bad men of the world need to know that the good men will always stand against them.  I can’t ask for your forgiveness, but I want to ask for your trust.  For your faith.  Maybe I don’t have that right anymore.  I hope that I do.  This shook me, but I know deep down inside that I’m still who I was.”  He turned slightly to glance at Bruce.  Bruce nodded, and Steve stood taller.  “I’ve built my life around being the best person I could be.  I’ve held true to the idea that fighting for what’s right is an honor rather than a burden.  These people tried to tear me down and put someone else in my place.  I’d like to say that they didn’t succeed, but even if they did for a moment, I… _we_ –”  At that he turned back to his team where they were firmly behind him.  “The Avengers brought me back.  I’m here and I’m alive and I’m telling you that I’m staying who I was.  Who I am.  I’m not backing down.  I’m not going to let anyone change me into something I’m not.  I will _always_ keep fighting, no matter how much it hurts and no matter how hard it is.  So when it really comes down to it, this is what I wanted to say.  I wanted to tell you that the Avengers stand between you and evil.  That’s where we belong.  All of us.  That’s who we are.  Nothing and nobody can change that.”

He didn’t get a chance to finish.  The room erupted in cheering.  Jobs and assignments were put aside as people clapped and shouted in euphoria.  Steve stepped back from the podium.  He hadn’t expected that.  The wave of support and elation spread outside, and the roar of the people applauding seemed loud enough to shake the very foundation of Stark Tower.  Steve was still, wide-eyed and surprised, as the other Avengers came closer to stand around him.  Seconds turned to minutes.  Minutes slipped away.  Soon it felt like the whole of the city was with them.

Tony nudged him in the ribs.  “Remind me to hire you as our PR guy.”  Steve smiled.  For the first time since Dan Lahey had forced him to be a part of this hellish adventure, he felt safe.

* * *

After Steve’s speech, the tense mood that had dominated the city since the attack all but disappeared.  Of course, the “haters were gonna hate”, as Tony put it, and there were still people arguing and debating the merits of the President exonerating someone who’d done a great deal of damage to public and private property and caused the deaths of dozens of people.  There were still those who were angry, who thought his press conference was nothing more than a pathetic attempt to save face.  And the public still hungered for answers about _what_ exactly had happened, answers that, if SHIELD got its way (and SHIELD usually did), they’d never have.  Steve mentioning his kidnapping and the experiments done on him sent the media back into a tizzy of analyzing what little information they had, but they were chasing their tails and everyone knew it.  It would only be a matter of time before the public forgot that it didn’t entirely understand and just flat-out embraced the idea that Captain America and the Avengers were there again, fighting for what was right and defending peace and freedom from evil.  The support was downright glorious and touching, and Steve started to believe that what he’d promised could actually be true.  He could be who he had been before AIM had ever gotten its hands on him.

A few days later, Clint and Natasha took him back to SHIELD.  They drove in a black SUV from Stark Tower to SHIELD Headquarters outside of Times Square.  He was met in the lobby with another round of applause from the agents present, everyone from lowly techs to the big decision-makers.  The attention made him a tad uncomfortable, but he didn’t shy away from it.  Clint stayed at his side, smiling himself at Steve’s attempts to dissuade people without being rude.  As Captain America, Steve had been on the receiving end of quite a bit of adulation and accolades in his time.  He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.  In his mind, he was still just a kid from Brooklyn.  Still.  And that was comforting.

From there they’d gone to see Hill and Fury.  Fury had been pleased to see him, remarking casually that he looked good and inquiring as to his well-being.  Steve had said he was fine, and he’d meant it.  The clean-up and containment efforts concerning the attack and the events leading up to it were still underway, as Hill explained.  The SHIELD Deputy Director had quickly gone over some details about that state of the organization and efforts to hunt down and dismantle the rest of AIM.  They’d talked briefly about the repairs to the helicarrier, and Fury had mentioned getting Stark’s assistance with improving their turbine engines.  Steve had a feeling that Tony would complain greatly but be more than interested in rendering some advice.  Then Fury had handed him a pad with orders to see Doctor Wright for a full medical evaluation and a staff psychologist for an assessment.

Steve supposed he should have expected this would be required before he was released to active duty.  Fury hadn’t put it in so many words, but he knew his reinstatement hinged on both the medical workup and the psychologist’s opinions.  Bruce had said he was sending all of his information to SHIELD, and Steve knew that he had.  He also knew that he was healthy and there was nothing about which he should worry, but the thought of another doctor looking at him…  It didn’t sit well.  There were scars on his psyche, and this was going to be one of them.  Like so many other things, he was going to have to find a way to deal with it.

Maybe that was what led him to the psychologist first and foremost.  Maybe accepting that he needed help was what had brought him here.  Or the nightmares he was still having and would continue to have.  Or the way his mind just seemed not his own sometimes.  Anxieties and fears and the symptoms of PTSD.  He wasn’t sure why.  But that was where he was.  He stepped into her office with a stiff smile on his face, nervous as all hell, and at her welcoming gaze and gentle insistence he sat in the chair in front of hers.  And then they were silent for a few minutes before he finally mustered up the courage to say something.  “I, um…  I wanted to apologize for how I acted the last time I was here.  Which was a while ago, I guess, so you might not remember.”

She still smiled at him, warm and unobtrusive.  “About a year, I think.  I remember.”

Steve wiped his hands down his thighs.  “I was pretty quick to ignore your advice.”

“Believe it or not, Captain, you’re not the first person to sit in that chair and do that,” she said with a bit of a laugh.  Steve chuckled too, even though it didn’t do much to alleviate his disquiet.  “One of things I realized early on in this career is that a lot of times people need to see things for themselves.  Learn things the hard way, so to speak.  There isn’t anything wrong with that, mind you, but stubbornness accounts for a lot of both the best and worse things in most of us.”

Steve nodded.  “I think I can attest to that.  And…”  He faltered and tried to calm his riled heart.  “I know I can’t do this by myself.  Clint – Agent Barton – he’s helping me, but he suggested I talk to someone who actually knows what the hell they’re doing, as he put it.”

“That’s a wise thing to say.”

“I’m not sure,” Steve admitted.  “Not that you don’t know what you’re doing because you do.  I’m not sure I can talk about it.  I don’t feel like I can do this sometimes.  I told everyone I could, but…”  He closed his eyes and gathered himself, trying desperately to be strong.  “I know I’m not okay, and I don’t know what to do about it.”  He breathed through the lump in his throat.  “Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I don’t recognize who I see.  It’s terrifying.”

She nodded sympathetically.  “It’s to be expected after what you went through, Captain.  The serum healed your body.  Maybe it even healed your mind.  But it can’t heal your soul.  Time and persistence and trust in yourself and others will do that.”

“I know.  That’s why…  That’s why I know I need help.”  He sighed, looking inside himself for some measure of strength and calmness.  “So much stuff got dragged into the light…  I don’t know how to put it back.”

“So don’t.  Tell me about it.”  When he was silent for a long minute, she leaned forward slightly and set her pad to the table between them.  “Don’t start with something you find painful or distressing.  Just tell me anything.  Anything you’re thinking.  Anything that’s on your mind.”

Steve thought about that for another long, silent moment.  “Actually, there is something,” he finally said.

“Okay.  Go ahead.”

Steve fidgeted a little before he summoned the equanimity to just say what he was thinking.  “The reason I stopped coming here after New York had a lot to do with something you said.”  She didn’t seem insulted or troubled by that, so he kept going.  “You said that whoever taught me to keep taking the hits and stand up and keep going did me a disservice.  That… Well, it really bothered me.”

“Why?”

“My mother…  She died of TB when I was twenty-two.  She was strong, so it took a while for it to take her.  I was taking care of her for a few months before she passed away.  It was hard to watch her suffer through that.  But it wasn’t just that.  I don’t remember a time in my childhood where she wasn’t suffering.  She worked her fingers to the bone for me, taking care of me ’cause I was so sick all the time, and my father…”  Steve’s voice trailed off as the memories rushed him again.  He wasn’t going to let them hurt him.  He sniffed and shook his head.  “When she was dying, she made me promise her that I’d be strong.  That I wouldn’t let things knock me down.  That I wouldn’t let things hurt me.  I wanted her to know that I’d be okay without her.  She never let anything hurt her.  She picked herself back up so many times for my sake that I…  You know what I did.”

“You loved her.  And you wanted to honor her.  You wanted to keep your promise.”  Steve looked up at the psychologist.  There was no judgment in her eyes or disapproval in her voice.  “I told you before that it’s not weakness to admit you need help.”

“She never did.  She took it all on her own shoulders.  Even when I was taking care of her and she was too sick to even feed herself, she kept insisting she was fine.  That I didn’t need to worry about her.  Down to her last moments, she kept smiling for me, kept promising me that she’d be okay.  All the things she buried inside her… She never let it at her heart.  I don’t think I’m that strong.”

“It’s also not weakness to admit that things hurt,” she said again.  “Eventually everything you put aside demands its due.”

“You told me that last time, too.  I’m starting to believe it,” he said.  He smiled a little.  “Compartmentalizing isn’t always the answer, right, doctor?”

She smiled, too.  “Your mother sounds like a wonderful woman.”

“She was.”

“Tell me more about her.  Tell me the things you loved about her.”

That surprised him.  He hadn’t spoken with anyone about his mother like that.  He’d never talked about his father or his childhood, either.  Not really.  Maybe that was part of the problem.  A piece of him had always been afraid of the bad things.  But he thought about Bruce and what it had meant for him to realize Steve’s past hadn’t dictated his future.  He thought about Tony and Howard.  He thought about Clint and the things Clint never talked about.  The demons inside, scarring hearts and minds and souls.  The darkness was there, but it wasn’t who they were.  So he started talking about the good things.  And as he did, he realized this wasn’t so bad.  He could keep the promises he’d made.  He could overcome what had been done to him, _everything_ that he’d kept inside for fear that if he faced it and let it knock him down, he’d never be able to get back up.  He could get back up.  That didn’t mean it would be easy, either, but it meant he could do anything.  He could get himself back.  He was still who he had been.

Steve Rogers.  A kid from Brooklyn.  A loving son.  Bucky’s brother.  A soldier fighting for everything in which he believed.  Clint’s closest friend and Bruce’s newly found friend and maybe even Tony’s friend when all was said and done.  He was a SHIELD agent and the leader of the Avengers.  He was Captain America.

But most of all he was still a good man.


	20. Chapter 20

“Don’t you have stuff to do?” Bruce said as he walked inside his newly restored lab to find Tony sucking down an energy drink and spinning in one of his chairs.  “And stop it.  Watching you do that is making me sick.”

“Working alone is boring,” Tony responded.  He thankfully held still for a moment before standing and tossing his empty can to the recycling bin on the other side of the room.  It hit the rim and clattered to the floor.  “Ugh.”

Bruce smiled fondly as he watched his friend walk over to pick up the fallen can.  It had been almost a month since the battle along the East River.  In that time, things had slowly but surely calmed down to the point where everything was almost normal again.  The media had long abandoned the debacle as a source of news fodder, having moved on to upcoming elections and celebrity gossip and the inclement nuptials of Tony Stark to his longtime girlfriend.  Tony hadn’t been too pleased with this sort of attention.  As much as Tony had used to love the media frenzy surrounding him, Bruce had noticed his interest in being the center of the universe had diminished since the Mandarin incident and even more since getting shot in Dan’s lab.  Even still, with only a modest amount of swearing, complaining, and groaning, he’d settled down about it.  Bruce wouldn’t ever mention it to his face but he thought Tony was just happy people were talking about him and his crazy rollercoaster of a life rather than what had happened to Steve.  Taking the heat for a while was like a small thing he could do to help, so he was doing it.

And he knew why Tony was here, too.  Why Tony had hardly left his side over the last few weeks.  Tony was worried about him.  Again, he’d never come out and say it, but Bruce was perceptive and better at relationships than most people realized.  Maybe the brunt of the damage from this horror had been done to Steve, but Bruce wasn’t without his wounds.  New scars to his already scarred heart and mind.  More things he carried around with him.  The thing was, though, he was past those things controlling him and dictating his life to him.  They didn’t feed his anger.  They didn’t even hurt him too badly now.  The guilt at being forced to experiment on another person and then being forced to watch that person degrade before his helpless eyes would stay with him a long time.  But he surprised himself with his calm acceptance of it.  He obviously surprised Tony, too, because the inventor was like a second shadow, watching anxiously and waiting for the storm to hit.

Bruce didn’t mind too much.  This wasn’t the first time over the last few days he’d come to his lab and found Tony there, waiting with a problem to which he pretended not to know the answer just so he’d have an excuse to hang around.  The ironic thing was Tony had never felt the need to manufacture reasons before.  This was just Tony being Tony.  He cared a lot more than anyone knew, maybe even more than he himself knew, and he was just trying to make things seem normal.

Like anything could ever be normal.  Tony was Iron Man and Bruce was the Incredible Hulk.  They were Avengers.  That alone was enough to make their lives a whirlwind of excitement, challenges, and chaos.  Bruce was starting to realize that he didn’t want it any other way.

“Besides, if Pepper catches me screwing around, she’ll have my butt,” Tony said as he returned to his chair.  He sloppily flopped down in it and resumed spinning.

“Doesn’t she already?” Bruce asked, setting his armful of pads and books to his shining workbench.  He had to admit that the lab looked nice, and it was pleasant to have entirely new things.  It looked _bigger_ somehow, with the morning sun blasting through the huge windows and all of his newly installed tools and equipment neatly organized along the shelves and inside the cabinets.  Truth be told, he was having a hard time figuring out _what_ to work on now.  He had a few papers in various states of preparation.  He had other experiments that needed attention.  He felt rejuvenated and a little anxious, like there was too much to do and not enough time to do it.  “Tony, _stop_.  What’s the matter?”

Tony did stop.  He was up and out of the chair again.  He was often a victim of restless energy, particularly when something was on his mind.  The fact that he was here this early in the morning meant he had something he wanted to say.  And the fact that he was beating around the bush meant it was something that was both important and awkward.  “What, I need an excuse to see you now?”

“No, but obviously you want to say something.  So say it.”

“I, uh…  Well, ugh.  I really suck at this crap.  Just… would you be my best man?”

That totally came out of left field.  “Huh?” Bruce stammered stupidly.

“You.  Best man at my wedding.  You know.  Tux and standing up at the altar like a penguin and handing me a ring.  I think.  Isn’t that what a best man does?  I dunno.  Like I said, I suck at this.”

Bruce still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around what Tony was requesting.  “You want me to…”

“Yes, I do.  You.”  Tony rolled his eyes a little bit like he was conceding a point.  “Well, you and Rhodey.  I couldn’t decide which, and Pepper suggested just having you both because I guess that’s okay with her.  I mean, I’m Tony Stark and despite all evidence to the contrary I wear the pants in our relationship, so whatever I want should be okay no matter what, but she’s surprisingly old fashioned for running the most cutting edge tech company in the world and I didn’t–”

“Sure.”

That cut straight through Tony’s rambling.  He regarded Bruce with relieved eyes and a dopey smile.  He’d really been afraid that Bruce would say no.  Honestly, the Bruce of six months ago might have.  The Bruce of a year ago, before the Avengers and Tony Stark had come barreling into his life, definitely would have.  But he was different now, and that was a good thing.  “You mean it?” Tony asked.

“Listening problem, right?” Bruce quipped, pulling his glasses from the breast pocket of his button-down shirt and sliding them on his face.  He opened up his laptop and booted it up.  Tony was still staring at him, and Bruce tried to be nonchalant about it.  About how very touched he was that Tony had asked him.  And about how much it meant to him that Tony cared so much as to be afraid of his response.  “Of course I mean it.”  He couldn’t help his ridiculously wide grin.  “I got it under control.”

Tony seemed surprised for a second.  Then he grinned, too.  “Told you that you fixed your problem.”

Bruce thought that might have been something of an overstatement, but he didn’t say that.  The fact was that it was good enough.  Tony clapped his hands together and then rubbed them.  “So, whatcha working on now?  Now that you figured out how to solve world hunger.  It’s kinda hard to top that, have to say.”

Bruce’s joy was tempered by a twinge of uncertainty.  This had been a small measure of contention between them for the last few days.  The fact was that during this disaster there had been no shortage of groundbreaking scientific discoveries.  Unfortunately they had all been wrought illegally and unethically, even Bruce’s findings concerning his self-sustaining tomato plants.  Tony was of the opinion that if good could come of it, it should be given the chance.  After all, Bruce had found a way to fairly successfully extract the super soldier serum and fairly successfully marry that with Extremis.  The possibilities stemming from that were major and innumerable.  It would change the world of biochemical and genetic engineering and open the floodgates for any number of important breakthroughs and advancements, everything from cures for diseases and ameliorating world hunger to better understanding the human body, mind, and soul.  And Dan’s drug was still something of an unknown.  Despite its horrors, it had created something that had never been seen before.  It had unlocked parts of the human mind that had never been studied.  The possibilities were literally limitless, and limitless possibilities could be turned into progress.

Bruce wasn’t so sure he agreed.  He did believe that what they had learned could radically alter and advance scientific research and solve some of the world’s most fundamental mysteries.  But that rang too much of what Dan had said.  Those were the sorts of obsessions that led unforgiveable acts.  They knew that firsthand.  Temptations were sometimes too strong to resist, and the road to hell was very often paved with good intentions.  The best intentions.  Bruce still had his data from his experiments.  He wasn’t sure what to do with it at this point.  But he was damn sure he never wanted it to fall into the hands of those who would do ill with it.  And that meant it needed to be kept quiet.  The world wasn’t ready for the responsibility that came with that sort of power.

And too much of this went back to those dark hours in AIM’s lab, fighting to find answers while Steve suffered before his eyes.  Too much of this knowledge had come at Steve’s expense.  The cost had been painfully high, and, frankly, it wasn’t Bruce’s to sell or even give away.

Tony didn’t entirely understand it, but he’d backed off and let the debate die.  Mostly.  Tony was stubborn to a fault, and even if he understood the dangers in sinking so deeply into a problem that the consequences and implications disappeared, he still saw science and engineering as separable from the human element.  Bruce was wiser than that, now more than ever.  Nothing was separable from the man.  But there was no sense in treading over all of this again.  “Not sure what to do next,” he admitted.  “I’m pretty close to finishing some work on electron collisions, but I wanted your opinions on parts of it.”

Tony’s face lit up.  “Does that mean I can co-author the paper?”

“No.  I’ve seen you write.  It’s like trying to explain quantum mechanics using leet speak.”

“Spelling words with numbers is hip.  And come on, I’m sharing my wedding with you.  Sharing is caring.”

“I’ll drop you a line in the acknowledgments.  A small line.”

“Ouch, Banner.  Is that all I’m worth to you?”

JARVIS’ voice called out through the lab, “Sir, Captain Rogers is here.  Shall I send him up?”

Bruce darted a worried look to Tony.  His mind immediately went back to the fateful meeting between the four Avengers that had started it all.  He watched Tony’s face for some sign of irritation or reluctance, but there wasn’t any.  “What?” he said, shocked at Bruce’s obvious dismay.  “I invited him this time.  Yeah, send him our way, J.”

A few minutes later, Steve appeared at the entrance to the lab.  He was wearing his uniform with his shield on his back.  Bruce hadn’t seen him since he’d gone back to SHIELD almost a month ago.  He was a little worried and disturbed that Steve still looked a tad haggard.  His eyes were slightly shadowy, somewhat haunted and not quite yet those of the man he’d been.  His hair was growing back quickly, but it was odd and unsettling seeing it so short.  Somehow it made him look more like a soldier.  Older and more hardened.  But he smiled an easy smile when he saw Tony and Bruce, and that immediately brushed aside the worry and tension.  “Tony,” he said in greeting, shaking Tony’s hand.  He nodded at Bruce.  “Hey, Bruce.”

Bruce came around his work bench and set his tablet to the table.  He also shook Steve’s hand firmly.  “You look well, Steve.”

Steve’s smile slipped just a little, but not enough to dim the light that had come to his eyes.  “Getting there.  Been seeing someone to help with it.”

Bruce was surprised and relieved, but he hoped it didn’t reach his face.  “That’s good.”

“Yeah.”  His quick eyes flicked over Bruce’s form.  “How have you been?”

“Me?  Oh, I’m fine.  Things are fine.”  Bruce glanced at Tony.  “Putting it behind us and focusing on the future.  Like you said, getting there.”

Steve nodded at that, and an uncomfortable moment of silence came between them.  Then Tony pushed himself off the lab bench on which he’d been leaning.  “Speaking of focusing on the future, I just wanted to run something by you, hence calling you here.  JARVIS, pull it up.”

On the holographic workstation, a slew of blueprints and plans appeared.  Steve came closer, squinting a little as he looked them over.  Bruce did as well, wondering when Tony had found the time to do all this.  “Is this…”

“Yep.  This is the second time Stark Tower has been trashed thanks to some crisis, so I’m thinking that that’s probably some kind of message.  Apparently  my name attracts trouble,” he said cheekily.  There was that shit-eating grin again, and if Bruce hadn’t been so impressed with what he was seeing, he would have rolled his eyes.  “I figured since I need to fix the sign again, I might as well make it official.”

“Wow,” Steve said.  The image of the outside of Tower was the largest of the pictures, but it didn’t say “STARK” on it in bold letters anymore.  Instead there was massive letter “A” where the sign had once been, and the “A” had an arrow through it.  It was more than obvious what it stood for.  “This is… big, Tony.”

“Yep.  And it’s not just a nice looking logo, either,” Tony said.  Excitement glowed in his eyes, and he was quickly going through the rest of his plans.  There were blueprints for some of the floors.  He explained as he went through them.  “The Tower will have command and operations rooms.  Complete medical facilities, given our propensity to get ourselves in trouble.  State of the art research labs.  This puppy here is going to be an exact replica of the Stark Industries’ computing cluster out in Malibu.  We’ll have eyes and ears on everything, just about as well as SHIELD does.  It’ll be a challenge for any bad guy to escape my notice.  And suites for us.  Each of us.  You know, in case we need to crash here.”  Tony was veritably brimming with pride and elation.  “Since you went and promised the world the Avengers, the Avengers need a base of operations.”

Steve shook his head.  “I know, but you didn’t need to–”

“It’s not a big deal.  Gave me something to work on.”

“What about the money?  This is going to cost a small fortune.”

“I have a big fortune, in case you haven’t noticed.  The money’s nothing.”  Tony brought the image of the exterior of the Tower up again, and the computer rotated it slowly.  Bruce had to admit it was impressive.  And awesome.  And inspiring, when he thought about it.  “So whaddya think?  Kickass, right?”

Steve seemed a little taken aback.  “You actually want my opinion?”

“You’re our fearless leader, aren’t you,” Tony said with a long-suffering note in his voice, “so, yeah, I want your opinion.”

Steve’s eyes returned to the display, lingering on the Avengers logo adorning the top of the building.  He glanced at Tony out of the corner of his eye.  “You never do anything halfway, do you?”

Tony looked a little hurt.  “What the hell?  You don’t like it.”

“No, Tony, I like it.”  Steve smiled.  “I think it’s great.  It just…”

Tony donned an expression of exasperation, and whatever tentative understanding that had been between the two men seemed to be vanishing before their eyes.  “What?” he snapped.  Steve looked sheepish.  And embarrassed.  And maybe a little miffed.  “God, Rogers, _what?_ Just say it.  My precious ego won’t shatter with yet another disapproving stare from Captain America.  Trust me: whatever bug’s up your butt won’t compare to the crap I’ve taken from people with considerably more clout than you.”

Now Steve looked flustered.  “This reminded me of How – of your father, that’s all,” he finally said.  The words were quickly spoken, like he wasn’t sure at all that they should be said.  Frankly, Bruce wasn’t either.  He watched Tony worriedly, searching his friend’s face for some sign of his reaction.  There wasn’t one, save for a bit of surprise.  Steve released a slow breath and shifted his weight to his other leg.  “He was the best at what he did.  The best, and we would have lost the war and our lives without him.  He was a helluva friend.”  A wistful gleam filled Steve’s glazed eyes for a moment before he focused on Tony.  “He always had this look about him whenever he was up to something.  You know, he always had new things to show me.  For the Commandos or SSR or…  It didn’t matter.  You just…  This took me back.  You look just like he used to look.  You’re just like he was, and it’s really something.  And I mean that in the best way.  Really.”  He shrugged a little, like he was trying to make light of what was a huge compliment, of the fact that he was telling Tony how much he respected him without having to say the words.  Then, at Tony’s increasingly dumb-founded expression, he smiled knowingly. 

That was enough to bring on Stark’s own million-watt smile.  It really meant a lot to him.  All of this was simply Tony being Tony again.  And it wasn’t about the money or that he was giving up his tower, his tech, or his time.  It was about helping.  It was about having Captain America’s admiration.  It was about putting their differences aside for the sake of the team and the friendship that would inevitably follow.  Bruce kept the pride from his face, but only just.  Eventually Tony managed to control his ridiculous grin.  “Aw, hell.  That’s just super touching.  Hit me right in the feels.”

Steve laughed.  “You wanted my opinion, Stark.”

“Next time I won’t ask if you’re going to go all nostalgic and bromancy on me.”  Tony shook his head, still scrambling to get his composure back.  He literally wiped at his mouth to try and get the smile off his lips.  Then he turned to Bruce.  “What about you, Banner?  Since you live here.”

Bruce folded his arms over his chest and returned his gaze to the image of the Tower.  “It’s like pointing a giant spotlight on our home,” he said with half a wince.

“Yep.”

 _In for a penny, in for a pound._   “Yeah, it’s fine.”

“Awesome.  I’ll get started then.  This is going to be cool.”

“Does Pepper know?  And I thought you had a wedding to–”

“What Pep doesn’t know won’t kill her,” Tony said quickly.  The excitement in his step was nigh uncontrollable as he turned to his plans and starting feverishly going through them like he was figuring out where to begin and what to do first.

“What am I not supposed to know?”  The feminine voice from the other end of the lab drew their attention, and Bruce never saw Tony move so fast.  With a swipe of his arm, the entire holographic display was wiped clean and all of his plans vanished.  Bruce resisted the urge to shake his head.  Pepper gracefully came closer, dressed for work in an impeccable pencil skirt, blouse, and blazer.  She looked positively radiant.  And when she saw Steve, a smile about as bright as the sun broke across her face.  “Steve!  I didn’t know you were here.”  She planted her hands unabashedly on Captain America’s chest and kissed his cheek before drawing him into a tender hug.

When that went on for too long, Tony stepped in.  “Alright, enough already.  Yeah, strong and handsome and wholesome and all that, but you’ve got Iron Man.  And I’m right here, by the way.  And I thought you were going to a meeting.  It’s not cool to barge in on guy time.  Bros before–”

“Tony–” Bruce warned.

“Wonderful fiancées.  What did you think I was gonna say?  Mind out of the gutter, Banner.”

Pepper shook her head and pulled back from Steve.  She looked kindly on him.  “How are you?  I have to say I miss having you around here.  You definitely added a level of politeness and humility that’s sorely lacking pretty much all the time.”

“Hey!” Tony protested.  “Now who’s being rude?”

Steve smiled disarmingly.  “I just stopped by for a second,” he explained, “to talk to Tony and give something to Bruce.  I really need to get back to HQ.”

“Fury sending you back out there?” Bruce asked.  For the first time it really sank into him that Steve was there, dressed in his uniform with his shield on his back, all strength and power and confidence again.  That could only mean one thing.

Steve nodded.  “Today, actually.  Clint and I are leaving in a few hours to track down some of AIM’s other labs across the Atlantic.”  Bruce and Tony shared a concerned glance that Steve didn’t miss.  Pepper wasn’t even all that subtle about it, wincing a little and shaking her head as if to object.  As if she had the power to.  “Don’t worry,” he promised.  “It’s alright.  They need to be stopped, and I can stop them.”

“Right.  Of course you can,” Pepper said.  She didn’t look entirely convinced or comfortable with the idea, but she dropped the matter for Steve’s sake.  He was Captain America.  If he said he could do it, he could do it.  “You sure you don’t want a cup of coffee or something?”

“No, no, it’s fine.  Thanks.”  He turned to Bruce.  And now he fidgeted again like he was nervous or didn’t exactly know how to approach whatever it was he needed to say.  “I, um…  I guess SHIELD was able to recover a lot of the data from New Mexico.  They had people going through the wreckage in the lab and they came across the computer you were working on.  They restored a lot of it.  And they had everything else from Lahey’s research and what you and Tony did.  Fury took it all and gave it to me.”  He reached into the pocket of his uniform and pulled out a USB drive with the SHIELD logo on it.  He stared at the small silver stick in his palm for a second.  “He said it wasn’t safe at SHIELD, that it really wasn’t safe anywhere.  He also said it really belonged to me anyway.  This is apparently the only copy.”

“And you believe him?” Tony said.

Bruce expected Steve to be affronted, but he wasn’t.  He was honestly considering the question and its answer.  SHIELD had had its hands on the tools it needed to reconstruct Lahey’s research.  That was a frightening thought.  Just because Bruce hadn’t found a way to stabilize Dan’s drug didn’t mean there wasn’t one.  And just because SHIELD claimed to have the best interests of humanity at its heart and world security as its goal didn’t mean its ambitions were pure.  Maybe Bruce didn’t harbor the same amount of suspicion and animosity toward SHIELD as Tony did, and maybe none of what had happened had really been SHIELD’s fault in the end, but that still didn’t mean he trusted them.  But Steve did.  “Yeah, I believe him.”  He didn’t offer a justification for it, and they didn’t ask.  Steve’s faith was good enough.  “The thing is, though, I don’t know what to do with it.  I don’t have much use for it.  And I don’t want it, either.  I was going to just destroy it.”  He paused like he was pained for a moment.  Bruce could imagine why.  Those long hours spent suffering with his sanity eroding would stay with Steve for a long time, too.  “But I couldn’t make myself do it.  It didn’t seem like the right thing to do.  I don’t know.  Maybe there’s no right or wrong answer.  And maybe something good can come of it.  So I thought I’d give it to you.”

That didn’t make sense to Bruce for a moment.  “What?  No.  Steve, I can’t take–”

“There are still some things I don’t remember clearly,” Steve said, taking a step closer, “but I’m pretty sure somebody said you could probably find some answers from it.”  He held out his hand to Bruce, the USB stick resting upon it.  “Go ahead, Bruce.  It’s alright.  I mean it.  I wouldn’t be here with it if it wasn’t.”  He smiled.  It was a little shaky, a little uncertain, but calm and comforting.  “Take it.  I’d feel better if you did.”

Bruce stared at what Steve was offering for what felt like forever.  There was certainly a part of him that wanted to snatch it right out of Steve’s hand.  He knew the extent of what was possible.  And even if he’d gone with Monica to try and save Steve, she’d been right to think that luring him into their midst with the chance for answers to his own condition, to his own questions, was enticing.  He thought of Dan and that conversation they’d had in SHIELD’s interrogation room about wanting to know.  _Needing_ to know.  The consuming drive to figure it out, to understand it and thereby own it.  And Steve was awarding him the ultimate opportunity to pick at the data, to dig into it and really pull it apart and search like he’d never searched before.

They all had said it.  Dan and Monica and Sterns.  Tony even.  There were answers in Steve’s blood.  Answers as to why the super soldier serum had worked on him and not on Bruce.  Perhaps even answers about how to fix the Hulk.

Before he thought better of it, Bruce was reaching for the drive.  He held it in his hand, his thumb sweeping down its edge.  He didn’t know what he was feeling.  Joy.  Excitement.  Revulsion.  No matter what, he _knew_ from where and from whom this data had come.  It hadn’t ever been Steve’s choice.

But this was Steve’s choice.  And Steve being Steve made it even worse (or better, Bruce wasn’t sure which).  “If that’s not enough, if you need… samples or something more, I’d be willing to help.”  Bruce looked up at him, absolutely shocked at the offer, but Steve had made it openly.  He was volunteering himself, his body, after all that had happened to him.  After all the hell science and scientists had put him through, he was giving Bruce unfettered access to _everything_ he needed.  Bruce couldn’t believe it at first, but the friendly light in Steve’s eyes was all he needed to convince himself that Steve meant was he was saying.  Steve trusted him.  And Steve wanted to help him.

“Thanks,” Bruce finally managed.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Steve seemed relieved.  Maybe he was simply happy to get rid of the data.  Maybe he was glad to help Bruce.  Probably it was a mixture of both.  He smiled again, brighter and fuller, and nodded.  “Alright, I just wanted to make sure you got that.  I really do have to go.  It was nice seeing you guys.  We’ll be in touch.”  That wasn’t a casual way of parting company or the sort of mundane and empty valediction acquaintances said to each other.  It was a promise, an oath sworn between friends.

“Yeah,” Bruce said.  He closed his fingers around the drive and squeezed tightly.  Steve reached out his hand and Bruce took it firmly.  Then Steve came a little closer and tugged him into a quick embrace.  He did the same to Tony before turning toward the door.

Pepper was waiting.  “I’ll walk you out, Steve, if that’s okay with you.  I do have a meeting to go to.”

Steve nodded.  “Sure, I’d appreciate that.”

She slipped her arm into his and the two of them started back across the lab toward the elevator.  Before they could leave, though, Tony sprang forward and called after them.  “Hey, Rogers.”  Steve turned.  Tony hesitated for a second, staring at Steve with a mixture of concern and disbelief over what he was about to say twisting his face.  “Be careful.  And if you run into trouble out there, call us.   Not that I don’t trust SHIELD, but I–”

“Don’t trust SHIELD.  I get it.”  Again, they expected some sort of disapproval or irritation or at least some disquiet.  But Steve’s face softened, and his eyes filled with gratitude.  He smiled again.  “I will.  Thanks, Tony.”

They were gone a moment later.  It took longer than that for Bruce to remember to breathe and think and move.  He felt the USB drive digging into his fingers, so he looked down at his palm.  He couldn’t comprehend it.  Tony’s voice cut through the fog in his head.  “Wow.  Talk about ironic.  All that angst and futility, and in the end, you didn’t even have to ask.  Somebody somewhere likes you.”

“Shut up,” Bruce said lightly.  He walked quickly back behind the workbench and pushed the USB drive into the port on the side of his laptop.  The operating system instantly detected it, and in a flash the files were open for them to see.  It was there.  Everything he’d been working on in AIM’s lab.  Monica’s test results.  Lahey’s research.  Wright’s notes.  The results of Bruce’s own analyses.  The blueprints to perhaps unravel the secrets of the super soldier serum.  The building blocks of Erskine’s brilliance.  The key to unlocking the answers that he had once been so driven to find.  It was _all_ there.

Tony leaned over his shoulder, watching the files and images and data stream by on the screen.  But he didn’t say what Bruce expected.  “He’ll be okay, right?”  Stark shifted uncomfortably, and Bruce felt more than saw him roll his eyes in half-hearted disgust at himself.  “Can’t believe I’m actually worried about this.  What the hell is wrong with me?”

Bruce could have given Tony a hard time about it.  He could have poked fun at his fledgling friendship with Steve and how this crazy incident had gotten down into his heart.  But he didn’t.  He smiled gently.  “Barton’s with him, so he’ll be fine.”

“I am not being a mother hen, by the way, and if you _ever_ so much as whisper about this to _anyone_ , I’m disowning you.  You will no longer be a BFF.”  Bruce pushed his laptop away gently and leaned back on his stool, still reeling from it all.  “What’s the matter?”

Bruce shook his head.  He didn’t know whether to be happy or upset or thrilled or uncomfortable, so he settled on a little bit of all of it.  “I can’t believe he did that.”

Tony stood straighter.  He walked over to the mini-fridge and pulled another energy drink from it before throwing himself less than gracefully back in his swivel chair.  “I can.  He’s Captain Perfect.  It’s not just a clever name.”  He thought about that for a second.  “It’s not even that clever.  It’s just lame, like he is.”  He resumed spinning while chugging his drink.  Bruce didn’t watch him long enough to get dizzy.  “Question is, Bruce: what are _you_ going to do?”

That was the question, wasn’t it.  Steve had given him the opportunity to get at what he had always wanted.  It wasn’t just about a potential cure for the Hulk, but about knowing, about finally understanding, why his experiment had failed.  His version of the serum and Gamma radiation had birthed a monster out of him, and if there was an explanation to be had from that other than the nature of the man underneath the transformation, he could find it.

He wasn’t certain he wanted to, to be honest.  He wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to know.  It had taken a lot to get this point.  “There are some questions that have no answers, Tony.”

“You sure about that?” Tony asked as he slurped his drink.  It wasn’t said with doubt or heat or any intention other than to make certain that Bruce was certain.

Bruce thought about it.  He’d been chained to this for so long, and it was high time that he freed himself.  It was funny how everything came full circle.  It was funny how life went on, how things ended up as they started and where they started, the same but not.  It was funny how a man could change and still be who he was.  Life and its ironies.  Bruce was starting to appreciate that.  As the nightmare that had begun in Dan Lahey’s lab started to fade into a bad memory, he realized he made too much out of things.  Too much out of his faults.  Too much out of his mistakes.  It was what it was, and he knew now he didn’t just have to be okay with that.  He didn’t have to tolerate it because there was nothing else and no other way.  He could accept it.  Embrace it, even.  He could do as Tony had suggested and measure his life by the number of times he’d stayed strong instead of the number of times he’d been weak.  He felt more at peace with himself than he ever had before.  It wasn’t only because of Tony and Steve and the Avengers.  It was because he knew he wasn’t flawed or a failure.  His experiment hadn’t worked, but that didn’t mean anything had been wrong.  And just because he was the Hulk didn’t mean he couldn’t be a hero.

 _Some things just aren’t worth it._ He took one last look at all of that data before saying, “JARVIS, wipe it.  My experiments.  This stuff from SHIELD.  Everything.  Delete all of it.”

“All of it, Doctor Banner?” the AI asked incredulously.

“All of it.”  And when it was done and everything was gone, he pulled the empty USB drive from his laptop and tossed it in the trashcan.  The clank of it hitting the bottom of the pail was loud and extremely satisfying.

Tony cocked an eyebrow.  “Nice shot,” he said.

Bruce smiled.  “Thanks.”

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there we are. I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart who read, subscribed, commented, and bookmarked this story. This was the longest one I've done and probably the most complicated and difficult to write. I realize it was a bit of a hard read at times, but hopefully it was a happy ending. As always, thanks to E, my beta-reader and partner in crimes against the Avengers.
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thegraytigress.tumblr.com)!


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